Yo, Henry, what’s for lunch?
Wild fried rice.
All right. Let’s say Chinatown, do some shopping. I’m a private.
Chef. Cook for money.
Guys, welcome back to what’s for lunch. Henry, welcome to the kitchen. You’re gonna show me. We’re gonna do a little collaboration on some fried rice. And then, so you cook us at your restaurant 3 LP, which is right here in Chicago, voted best Chinese restaurant in Chicago. So that’s an amazing fee. Congratulations on that. So this is gonna be the best of the best. We’re we’re not messing around with this fried rice.
Henry came prepared. Fried rice is something that I think anyone at home should know how to make. It’s pretty easy. It’s a good leftover meal to make. You know, I want to learn from the best. So we’re gonna use some walk fried rice here. And we’re doing a little bit of twist today. We’re doing wild, we’re gonna use some wild rice in there. Yep. You’re from.
Minnesota, right?
Exactly. So you ask, this is like, what is native to Minnesota that we could use for this fried rice dish. While the rice is grown in Minnesota, I grow beating a lot of wild rice soup, a lot of stews, but I’ve never used it in a fried rice. So what’s the, what are we working with for the rice blend here?
Alright, so this is wild rice from Minnesota. You got Jasmine rice, long grain rice. So you just need to have a good blend. This is.
Old, couple days old, correct?
Not a couple days. Oh, overnight. Oh, overnight.
Okay. Yeah, some beautiful chittaki mushrooms right here. And then we have some Thai chilies. I said I wanted some spice. So we have some Thai chilies and then our protein for this is gonna be pork belly. But like if you’re at home, you can really make this with anything. You pick a protein or you can go straight veggie and you pick your veggies and fried rice. The beauty of it is it’s a leftover meal. So anything you have lying around you want to use up for a fried rice, what’s the biggest mistake you think people make when making like a fried rice? What’s like, besides not using the old rice.
The walk not being hot enough, you know, that’s a big thing. You know, it depends on your BTU, but like normal houses, you know, you’re gonna have to heat that walk up for a long time before you could start.
Cooking. Can’t be afraid of the heat. Yeah, you really do want that oil to be smoking kind. And when it hits.
That pan. So there’s this term is called walk hay. So it’s just, you need to have that smoke. Like my old man taught me. We cook on the walk range. He’s like, you gotta see some kind of smoke coming out of the walks first before you, you know, put the oil in and get ready to go to work.
So speaking of that, so let’s get this thing nice and rip and hot. We have our walk here and to properly use a walk, which I think my technique is probably nowhere near perfect, but you’re gonna show me the proper way of tossing everything and really using a walk the way it’s supposed to be made. So I’m excited to learn that from you, too.
When you heat the, this walk up to you, like you kind of want to move it a little bit, you want to get a consistent.
Heat to is a traditional walk, not a flat bottom.
Correct. It’s like a cylinder.
For most people at home, this is what they’re gonna have this all work on. And you can even use, correct me if wrong, you can use a standard pan.
But open flame is obviously better.
Yes, yeah, yeah. And then what are we gonna do to this pork belly as far as cooking in our pan?
Light, soy dog, soy rock sugar, if you have access to it.
So you really get a lot of that sweetness that’s going from.
There. But you know, any sugar works too. Like you could use brown sugar works well.
Let’s get this ginger prep up here.
Yes, I’ve never seen that.
For ginger of spoon I find works better than. Yeah, that’s all you need. Look at that.
Come on. See my boys this. Yeah, they have you in my kitchen. It’s way faster. Yeah, man. All those fillers I have in my kitchen. What the.
Yeah, you don’t need him anymore. This, you can’t give him a spoon. So boom. There we go. I’ll get our ginger. We have some garlic in there, some soy sauce. What’s the secret? What else?
What do we put? Okay, so I have my some pepper seasoning blend. It has five spice, white pepper, salt, MSG. Obviously, I put the some pepper on everything. So it’s not your normal black pepper and salt.
And some mirroring right in here.
One of the top secret ingredients is Pepsi. Little bit Pepsi. Yeah, Pepsi. Go wrong with Pepsi, right? This is how you phrase it, but like, we’re gonna use it as like, kind of like a marinade. So you let this sit for a few hours. Okay. And then, okay, perfect. Oh, that smells delicious. Yeah, that’s great. I smell, oh man, I, Pepsi makes a difference, man. So.
That’s gonna be amazing. Yeah, our and it’s smoking over here.
I usually do this.
And now that smoke we’ve that’s a good sign, right? That’s that means we’re at the right heat. So much with any like stir fry, right? You just wanna keep everything moving in the pan. Burning cake. We’re already getting a lot of color on.
That. We could go cook some garlic and garlic. A little red soy on the side, too.
Yeah, there we go. Now we’re.
Talking. Add some chili. I don’t wanna go too spicy. So look at that.
A little bit. So is it like a motion with a hand? So you show me, you show. So.
I haven’t done this, you know.
Oh yeah, I can tell those chillies are spicy cuz my eyes are burning.
I didn’t want to at all.
This is some Thai basil. Now that we’re adding, we’re gonna fry this.
Now we cook the pork belly. Wow, look at that. Yeah, look at that. But first of all, they’re too thick. After we cook it, then we’re gonna dice them. So the saying goes, when you take one bite of your fried rice, all the ingredients should be in that spoon. Okay. It smells delicious.
I said Pepsi. You have more Pepsi? And I have more Pepsi. Beautiful that you could see it bubbling up. Other Chinese restaurants, especially like in the suburbs, like, you know, you’re holding the wall. Restaurants, they don’t even do that. So they take two bachelas, giant ones, right? And then the walk will be like this. So walk, hey, in the BTU, it’s still crazy hot. So you gotta do it fast. Got it. That’s called Serenfei. Serenfei. Yeah, serenfei in Cantonese. And what you and me were doing. That’s POW. POW. Yeah, that’s Powell. So you speak.
Cantonese and Mandarin or just. I.
Say good. I see a good decent amount of Mandarin. I get by, but Cantonese is my native tongue. Okay, so in high school, I was the only Chinese kid in my division class. And then the funny thing, my division teacher was a, was Chinese. Next day, all the Mexicans and white people, they starts cursing in Chinese. And then he looked directly at me. I was like, how do you know I talk? That’s funny. I got in trouble. That’s it.
Yeah, I knew enough Chinese. I live in Shanghai for like six months with Donny and.
Oh, you lived well. Yeah, I knew PJ. And that’s about, yeah, Chao Feng Chao fun. Oh, the noodle.
I guess could order. I would just ordering .
Shalom bao, you know? Shalom bao. You didn’t learn any bad words?
I did, but I can’t remember.
What. That’s a good thing. Beautiful. Look at that. That was good. That’s beautiful. How is your.
Spice tolerance? You like.
Oh, I love. You love spicy.
You prefer special one or you prefer like traditional?
No, to be honest, not to bash on my own motherland, but that Sichuan spice is just a numbing oil. I like South Asian.
You like South Asian really hot. Real s. That’s real spicy. Alright, so dice these up. So we gotta try a little piece though. Yep. Oh my God, it’s gonna be good. This might be the best thing we’ve made in this kitchen.
I saw. Because of pepsicola. There it is.
Where it is.
You get that part. We’re gonna put it all together. So we’ll put some egg first. So you don’t want the egg to stick. If you, the egg starts sticking to the pan, you don’t have enough oil or you didn’t heat it enough. And.
Unlike traditional cookware, you season as you go. With fried rice, you want to wait till the end of it, season everything.
Yeah, so all the seasoning goes in the end. And like chicken bullion, MSG, soy sauces, tourists and also. So you want to break down the rice too. Hello, more oil. Just start tossing in some garlic. Tomorrow is going in. Yeah, break down the eggs too, because everything’s gonna fit in one spoon. And then you could add a little bit of soy sauce only on the rim, a little bit of the, some pepper seasoning, and then you go with the basil. That’s beautiful.
Look at that color. My green is nice. So smells amazing. You gotta.
Make sure you scoop on the bottom.
And you’re looking for all the rice to basically be coated in a soy sauce. And like that’s how you know, it’s, yeah.
You probably you want a consistent color. Okay, traditionally, we don’t like to put a lot of soy sauce in our food. Okay, this is more of an American thing. Like when you go to China, you do get a fried rice. We usually eat like Zhao Chao fan. It’s not dark. Got.
It. Yeah, I mean, okay, so that’s an American thing.
Alright, so here it is. You can plate it.
Up. Yeah, so pack it into a bowl. Now, this, if you want like a nice presentation, the easiest way, just get it into any kind of bowl shape you want, pack it in there and you have a perfect little half dome.
that’s fancy. Boom. Yeah, I like that. Go a.
Little green. Yeah, a little scaling on top. Garnish, couple of red chilies.
On top of Pepsi.
Pelvic. Alright, this looks delicious. I think now all we gotta do, give it a try, right? The final step, most important step, though. It’ll bite at everything.
And make sure that part belly is in there. Cheers. Oh, yeah, that.
Worked. That word. those.
Type children. Dude, this is real good. Dude, this is so good. I think I might have to put it on the menu.
No way. You think.
You might have to call it wild fried rice. I.
Like that. Stay tuned, guys. That’s gonna do for this episode of what’s for Lunch. Henry, thanks for coming on. Appreciate all the techniques. Now I got something to add to my bag of tricks. And that was awesome. That’s a great fried rice. Guys, we’ll see you next time. Peace.
Dude, this is really good.