Food and Cooking

Thanks for sharing. You're doing some things differently than me. I make close to a week's food at once with a bunch of meat, veggies, and rice all in the oven at the same time. It is budget friendly, relatively low effort, and healthy. I've been playing around with how I do the rice. This is the real reason for my post here. I'm looking for the different techniques that alter the final texture. I think I have a good grasp of that now. The main factors are presoaking, briefly sautéing the dry rice before cooking, the extent that the rice is washed of starch dust before cooking, the timing of when the water is fully evaporated, the total cooking time, and if the rice is fluffed after cooking.

From my own fried rice experiments, slightly undercooking rice intended for fried rice, along with slightly less water, and then cooking a bit longer with a bit more water during the fried rice stage, will result in a slightly nutty flavor and texture that can be interesting, at least with Jasmine rice. I often also add a package of quick microwave brown rice which is like 1:5 of my Jasmine from the oven. This improves overall texture too.

I typically fry with the pan stock left over from cooking whatever meat of the week I have and that meat goes in as well. I mostly use the same veggies I made for the week but chop up the cooked stalks from broccoli as the main vegetable. I start with fresh diced garlic, ginger, and green onions and don't use any other spices. I do a couple of watered down eggs quickly sloshed around a hot wok to cook a thin layer just before adding my rice and the fry I made and removed before the eggs. I typically add enough soy sauce to easily unstick any egg that remains.

Your idea of adding an extra sauce is completely new to me. Spicy mayo and teriyaki sauces mixed sounds terrifyingly fascinating.