What Would You Add to a Warm Bowl of Rice? 🍚🍛🍙
Picture a steaming bowl of fluffy white rice waiting for you 🍚🍙
What's the move? Toss on a couple of sunny-side-up eggs? 🥚🍳 Couple it with sizzling Spam? 🍖 Or go green with a bunch of veggies? 🥔🥕🥦 I'm in desperate need for some new ways to spice up the ol' rice routine, so I'm all ears! 🔥💪
Got any quirky combos or flavor-packed suggestions?
- Take any bottle of Asian-style sauce & pour a little in a small saucepan. Put it on low heat, add whatever spices you like in it & stir. When steam starts rising off it, turn off the burner & remove the pan from the burner. When the rice is done, stir your doctored sauce one more time & dump it in the rice. Mix it all up good, then put the rice on your plate & chow down.
- Do the above but stir-fry the rice in a wok or wide pan with your doctored sauce.
- sausage, cut in small pieces & pan-seared. I use turkey or chicken sausage, but any kind will do.
- sauted or sweated peppers. Cut 'em up fine if you like. I normally use serrano peppers & avoid jalapeno or other hot kinds but if you like hot stuff, go for it.
- Any two of the above.
- All of the above, stir-fried in a wok. If you don't have a wok pan, then you need one. Seriously.
@sweetnutella 😂 Thanks. You're great at fluffing up my ego... But seriously, these aren't "recipes" so much as tricks I've developed over the years, & basic technique. I learn something here & there in my travels, & sometimes an idea occurs to me. It's really about knowing how to use what you have, & putting ingredients together so the result tastes good & doesn't put you in the hospital. 😜 Once you have enough savvy under your belt, recipes don't matter as much because you can come up with your own recipe/formula to fit the situation.
Don't get the wrong idea, though...I am not a professional cook, let alone a chef. There are tons of people out there who are better at food prep by at least a mile. I suspect at least a couple members of Cups could legitimately claim that, if they wanted to. My only professional experience was as a dishwasher in an Italian restaurant that shut down ages ago...it was educational. I learned a few things, one of them being: never work in a restaurant named after the owner. 😏
I almost forgot: for any soy sauce-based or hoisin-based sauce, you can also add a teaspoon or so of white wine, for flavor. (The simmer will drive off any alcohol in it) A pinch of arrowroot will thicken it, but you gotta add the arrowroot after you take the saucepot off the heat & stir it in well. Continuing heat breaks the stuff down.
@slowdecline48 thank you for the tips and tricks! I will make sure to jot them down 🧐 but I think we don't need to be a professional cook or even a chef to be able to cook something delicious and hearty! In your case, for example, you're able to feed yourself and your loved ones by gaining experience from traveling and picking up a thing or two from your previous work, which is just as valuable!
I'm still so far from calling myself a cooking savvy, but your recipes seem to be doable enough even for a noob like me xD so that's appreciated, thank you! ✨
@sweetnutella
this post hits home since i grew up eating rice all the time. my top 3 combo to elevate rice below:
1 - crispy fried egg with the yolk still runny. add in some scallions, soy sauce and some lan gan ma chili oil
2 - pan fry some diced tofu (make it crispy), chopped up tomatoes and onions and seasoned with salt.
3 - diced up tomatoes and seasoned it with salt. add eggs and scrambled them together, don't cook for too long, you want this dish to be a bit moist. lastly, add mountain sauce.
@sweetsnpeaches That all sounds dee-lish, though I don't know what mountain sauce is.
@sweetsnpeaches OMG another step-by-step reply, I'm on cloud 9! 😵😍 and this seems like a very simple yet delish dish that would be perfect for a rainy day ✨ the chili oil will keep us warm (and well hydrated, lol.) And I'm definitely big on half-cooked eggs, so the more moist it is, the better!
Btw, I'm glad this post reminds you of the good ol times. Thank you for sharing this tasty meal with us! Feel free to share your recipes on the Hobby Zone sub community ✨ I'm sure lots of people will love it!
@sweetnutella
the hobby zone community sounds fun! i would love to check it out. by chance, do you have a link to it?
@sweetnutella tuna, mayo, sriracha, soy sauce, roasted seaweed.
@communicativePond1728 the thought of combining tuna + sriracha + seaweed is divine 🤩🍛 is this your go-to combo? ✨
@sweetnutella maybe one of them!
@communicativePond1728 Sounds interesting but--this is a bit much to admit. Gonna do it anyway--I've never used seaweed in my cooking. Truth be told, it makes me a bit nervous. Who would ever eat kelp??...it must be awfully salty. What do you do with seaweed? Do you throw it in soup or stew like celery, or...?
The only time I've ever eaten it was when I was in a sushi bar. It was nice enough but at this point, I am not about to buy a rolling mat, fish knife & whatever other tools one makes sushi with. Have gone down enough rabbit holes already!
@slowdecline48 I'll break it down so there's no rolling or rabbit holes necessary!
The breakdown: use pieces of nori to pick up mouthfuls of the food. Can even eat straight from the pot too.
And yes, while seaweed is nutritious with its high mineral content, it's also high in salt and iodine. So everything in moderation, including moderation. My mom would use kelp sometimes and I was like 'what is the whole ocean doing in my esophagus'.
Anyway the roasted snack size nori is ideal but the regular sized works too, just needs an extra step to tear into smaller pieces (therapeutic...imagine shredding your worries away). And it can even be regular dried sheets, not roasted.
My favourite nori is the premium, award winning SeaSnax. It's properly certified organic, comes roasted and the onion option just tastes the best to me so far. I found them on sale here where you can buy up to six of the snack sizes: https://well.ca/products/sea-snax-grab-go-toasty-onion_105711.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsaqzBhDdARIsAK2gqnfHpD2yA7Sjc596BQlEwVR7LDkLBLqSFlIPOXk7e8zsboOO8m8FyDcaAkGLEALw_wcB
If you buy larger quantities of nori, some kind of storage is recommended otherwise it loses its dried or roasted crispiness. The eco-friendly silicone food storage bags like from 'Stasher' could be an option.
I found Stasher bags recently at my local eco-conscious shop, seen them on health/healing/helping YouTube channels like Downshiftology and they're also available online.
They're dishwasher, freezer, oven, and microwave safe with different shapes and sizes from flat bottom ones for cooking and storing things like soup to the classic sandwich size.
Here's their Canadian site...it's having a sale right now. https://www.stasherbag.com/pages/sale/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsaqzBhDdARIsAK2gqncMEK4_MHoBwWxOGN_BqtSYXGaaU5GRkQObqdnH29w5duUJeNgSYE0aAlmWEALw_wcB
@communicativePond1728 That was most informative. Gonna download all this info right now. Thanks! Guess I'll have to experiment with this "nori"...definitely a Japanese word. If it's salty then I'll have to do it cautiously, as I have to watch my sodium intake. (Medical reason)
@slowdecline48 Nori is definitely a Japanese word for sure probably.
I wonder what it is in English or if it's the same.
Anyway I picked up a couple SeaSnax from my local grocer and snapped a pic of the nutrition content for you in case that helps:
Tried to mitigate the glare, quality and blurriness but my photography skills are not exactly the most good.
It has no cholesterol!...Excellent.
@sweetnutella
I eat rice for breakfast with butter, brown sugar and milk.
@sweetnutella Raisins
@sweetnutella banana. Adding it while the rice is cooking or at least still pretty hot allows the flavours to combine.
@communicativePond1728 oh wow, I never thought of this combo before 😵 what would this dish be called?
@sweetnutella ?
@sweetnutella Beans! White beans, red beans, pinto beans, black beans 🫘 😋
Or chicken teriyaki
Ok now I'm hungry!
Shrimp and scrambled eggs😋
@sweetnutella
When I started meal prepping (because of return to office), I'd do "one pot" rice cooker dishes. Add in the rice, some Chinese sausage or bacon, sauce/seasoning, and cook. Then when done, toss in some frozen peas or maybe pickled veggies. It would be brought for the office days.
Each weekend I'd try to slightly vary up what I was adding.