A super quick and easy garlic fried rice to elevate any simple meal. Easy but flavorful and fragrant that comes together in no time. Another great recipe from the popular Korean celebrity chef, Baek Jong Won. It works well as a simple main dish or as a complimentary rice meal that pairs well with other dishes.
This recipe uses just 5 ingredients. It’s easy to use leftover rice or any rice you may have frozen in the freezer. Some nights, you just need a super easy simple meal. We keep our freezer stocked with frozen mandu (dumplings), shrimp tempura, and usually some other quick dishes that can be easily put together in the air fryer or on a pan. On these days, if we want to up the level of the meal, we’ll pair it with garlic fried rice. It comes together so fast and is deliciously very fragrant of garlic.
It’s also very easy to make the night before and have it for lunch as long as your colleagues don’t mind some of the garlic scent in the office.
The recipe is very forgiving. You can add in chopped spam, sausages, bacon or any other meat to make it more of a complete meal with any side dishes.
A few quick tips:
- Rice: It’s best to use day-old rice. If you need to make a new batch of rice, take the rice out of the rice cooker as you start the recipe so that the rice has a few minutes to allow some of the surface moisture to evaporate and dry out a little bit before you add it into the frying pan. Slightly dried rice will have better texture in the fried rice and cook better with the other ingredients. If not, the texture may be a little sticky.
- Garlic: Using garlic cloves, and slicing/mincing yourself is best. If you don’t have garlic cloves at home, and only have premade or jarred minced garlic, make sure to squeeze the excess liquid out of the garlic. These garlics usually have a lot more moisture/liquid and will splatter when added to oil.
- Baek Jong Won shows an option to prepare the garlic two ways: thinly sliced and minced. He notes it doesn’t make a huge difference in the flavor and thinks that just using all minced garlic might taste the best and that the thinly sliced garlic is for looks. I like the thinly sliced garlic for the crispy texture it provides and like to mix the two but to the Chef’s point, it probably doesn’t make a difference. If you feel lazy, you can prepare it all in just one way you prefer.
- Variations: As noted, you can add different proteins to this dish to make it a full meal without any side dishes. Most popular variations I saw on Korean blogs were spam and shrimp! Sausage and bacon will likely work well here too. If using, add the protein into the garlic as it slowly starts to lightly brown, but before it’s toasty so that the meat cooks as the garlic is done. Need to be careful to not over brown the garlic which is make it bitter.
Enjoy!!
Garlic Fried Rice - Baek Jong Won
Ingredients
- 8 cloves (35 g) garlic, sliced thinly or minced
- 3 Tbsp cooking oil more as needed
- 1.5 Tbsp soy sauce
- 2 servings of rice about 3 cups or 400 g
- Pinch salt
- 1 Tbsp (14 g) butter
Instructions
- Heat a frying pan on medium heat with 3 Tbsp of cooking oil. Add in the garlic (can add before the oil is warmed).
- Continue to stirfry the garlic until it’s lightly browned. If there's not enough oil to spread across all the garlic, add 1-2 Tbsp of additional oil. The oil will become fragrant from the garlic. **Don’t overbrown the garlic, it will become slightly bitter.
- Lower the heat to medium-low. Add the soy sauce into the garlic and oil mix. Stir fry for 30 seconds.
- Turn off the heat. Add a pinch of salt into the garlic mix.
- Add the rice into the frying pan and break up the rice and mix well the garlic. (Heat will continue to be off so the rice can be well mixed without burning the garlic too much).
- Turn the heat back on to medium, and add the butter into the middle of the rice. Continue to toss the rice until the butter is mixed and melted into the rice. Serve!
Notes
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