For a long time, fried rice has not held a very high "status" in people's minds. In the eyes of some, fried rice is nothing more than a way to handle leftover rice, let alone anything nutritious.
First, the raw material for fried rice is leftover rice, which is reheated, leading to a loss of vitamins, especially vitamin B1. Therefore, its nutritional value is not as high as freshly cooked rice.
Second, after being stored, the starch in the rice undergoes a degree of retrogradation, becoming harder in texture and slowing down digestion, making it less suitable for people with indigestion.
Third, in the process of stir-frying, some oil must be added, which increases the calorie and fat content of the fried rice. If fried rice is still eaten as a staple food, it is not conducive to maintaining body weight.
Finally, rice is rarely eaten on its own and is always paired with various dishes to ensure food diversity. However, when made into fried rice, it does not provide enough vegetables, which does not align with the principle of dietary diversity. However, whether a certain way of eating is healthy cannot be concluded so simply. In fact, as long as we apply some cooking techniques and nutritional wisdom, fried rice can still be incorporated into a healthy diet, contribute to food diversity, and even become part of the diet for people with diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension. To achieve this, just a few small tricks are needed:
1. Increase the diversity of ingredients. When making fried rice, in addition to eggs, you can add many vegetable ingredients. For example, vegetables like mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms, stir-fry-resistant vegetables like diced bamboo shoots, carrots, celery, and soybean sprouts, and even ingredients like diced tofu and cooked chicken breast, or a little pine nuts, crushed peanuts, crushed walnuts and other nuts. After such a combination, the color, texture, and flavor of the fried rice become more rich and varied, and the nutritional balance is also improved.
2. Reduce the proportion of white rice. When cooking rice, you might as well add various grains and legumes, such as barley, millet, and oat rice. When making fried rice, you can also add fresh seed ingredients like sweet peas, edamame, and sweet corn kernels to complement. People will be surprised to find that coarse grains with a strong chewiness and high fiber content become more fragrant and delicious when made into fried rice.
3. Reduce the amount of oil used in fried rice. Rice is a starchy food that is easy to stick to the pan when stir-fried in a regular wok. Using a non-stick pan can avoid using too much oil and the problem of sticking. In addition, when stir-frying, try to add oil only once. First, sauté the seasonings in oil, add diced vegetables, peas, mushrooms, etc., and stir-fry until semi-cooked. Then, add the rice and stir-fry together. Finally, beat the eggs and pour them into the pan, allowing them to evenly coat the rice surface to achieve a "golden wrapping silver" effect that is both low in oil and delicious.
4. Control the amount of salt in fried rice. Because fried rice is considered a staple food, adding too much salt can lead to excessive sodium intake in a single meal. Therefore, it is advisable to use a variety of spices when making fried rice. Besides the most common chopped green onions, you can also use a small amount of other spices like fennel, cinnamon powder, black pepper, and curry powder to enhance the aroma and compensate for the loss of flavor from using less salt. Additionally, you can use chicken powder as an equal substitute for salt. Since the sodium content in chicken powder is about half that of salt, an equal replacement can reduce sodium content while enhancing flavor, making it more easily accepted by people.
5. Use low-oil vegetables to accompany fried rice. Although the fried rice already contains some vegetables after adding rich ingredients, it is still far from the goal of 500 grams of vegetables per day or 200 grams per meal, and it contains almost no green leafy vegetables. Therefore, fried rice cannot be the entire meal and should be paired with other vegetable-based dishes. At the same time, considering that fried rice already contains oil, the cooking of vegetables should be low-oil, such as making green leafy vegetables by blanching, oil-boiling, stir-frying, or raw mixing.
After adding a large amount of ingredients, fried rice becomes a simple way to increase food diversity and is also a good method to avoid food waste.
For example, if you stew a chicken at home, after drinking the chicken soup and eating the wings and legs, you are left with the white chicken breast, which is tasteless to eat but a pity to throw away. Cut it into small pieces and add it to the fried rice. With the aroma of chopped green onions and black pepper, your family will happily accept it. Another example is when the ratio of other ingredients to rice reaches 1:1 or even higher, you can turn one bowl of rice into two bowls of fried rice, which is especially helpful for diabetics and people losing weight who need to control their carbohydrate intake. They can use other ingredients to increase the volume, especially high-satiety ingredients like sweet peas, mushrooms, and diced bamboo shoots, which can help them maintain a good sense of fullness while reducing white staple foods by half, which is very beneficial for weight control.