The recipe name might sound fancy, but it actually just uses a sauce that resembles the taste of Peking duck. The sauce goes well with many different ingredients, so it’s definitely a great one to add to your weekday dinner recipe box. I invented the dish when I was trying to use leftover roast duck meat to create a quick lunch. Instead of using my go-to fried rice recipes (soy sauce fried rice and chicken fried rice), I poured in hoisin sauce because it’s the first thing that pops into my mind whenever I deal with duck meat. It turned out to be one of the best fried rices I’ve ever had! This fried rice recipe belongs to the category of recipes that I’d highly recommend to anyone new to Chinese cooking. It’s a flexible recipe and very forgiving. You are unlikely to overcook it. You do not need a wok and can easily adapt the recipe to whatever ingredients you have on hand. The prep takes ten minutes and the cooking takes another ten. When you taste the rice, you’ll wonder how such a simple dish tastes better than one at a Chinese restaurant.
Cooking Notes
When you finish prep, you should have these few things near your stove: the 3-ingredient sauce, leftover rice, garlic and onion, any leftover meat (or skip it), and a few handfuls of veggies. You see, this is the beautiful part of Chinese cooking. It uses minimal ingredients, yet the finished dish is delicious and full of color.
Simply remember one thing during cooking – heat up the pan with high heat and keep using a high enough heat to keep the pan hot. A very hot pan allows the rice to get a nice sear, so you gain a wok-like texture, even using a nonstick skillet. Then you can leave it to the sauce to work its magic. Hoisin sauce contains sugar, which caramelizes very well during cooking. Even if you cook the rice a bit too long, it will only get better. The rice will lose some moisture and separate, eventually becoming beautifully charred. The ingredients in this recipe are very flexible. If you do not have leftover duck, no worries! The recipe will go very well with any leftover meat, or even without meat. I used kale to add color and nutrition. You can replace it with mustard greens or spinach. To throw in veggies without prep, use frozen green peas or carrots. Too daunting to cook the egg separately? Scramble the egg into the rice in one pan. That’s it!
If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it (once you’ve tried it), and take a picture and tag it #omnivorescookbook on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with. Cheers, friends!
