You must have ordered veg fried rice countless times in a restaurant. It is one dish that has it’s nice sour and sweet flavors with crunchy veggies. As my family also loves this dish a lot, I have tried making it with many different combinations of ingredients. While elders in my family like vegetable pulao, I have seen that it is the children who love to gorge on fried rice. Anything combining with rice is definitely delicious but not everyone likes to try veg Biryani which requires more efforts and is time-consuming. Plus Biryani or Pulao are not as versatile as fried rice since the latter is equally good as a snack.
Rice is indeed the most important ingredient in your Indian kitchen. If you simply have some leftover rice, just adding garlic and jeera to it will transform this to great palatable snack. So how about adding nice veggies and some tangy sauce to make it into fried rice. Nothing gets better than veg fried rice in the Indian household. It is one dish that comes in my category of “anytime dish”. This recipe I am sharing here has the best combination of healthy veggies. Also, I have avoided harmful ingredients from restaurant style fried rice.
Veg Fried Rice Recipe:
- Preparation Time: 10 Minutes
- Cooking Time: 15 Minutes (Rice) + 15 Minutes (Rice)
- Servings: 2 plates
Required Ingredients:
For Veggies
- 2 tbsp Oil
- 2 tbsp Thinly Chopped Ginger
- 5 Garlic Cloves Thinly Sliced
- 1 Medium Size Onion Thinly Shredded
- 2 Green Chilies Slit or Cut Thinly
- 1 Medium Carrot Chopped Thinly or Cut in Cubes
- 5 French Beans Chopped Thinly
- 1 Capsicum (One or More Than One Color) Chopped in Cubes or Shredded Thinly.
- A Handful of Green Peas
- Soy Sauce 2 tsp
- Salt as required
- Freshly Crushed Black Pepper
- A Handful of Thinly Chopped Spring Onions
For Rice:
- Basmati Rice 1 Cup
- Water 1 Cup
- Salt ½ tsp
How To Prepare Veg Fried Rice At Home?
1. Wash and rinse rice properly in a vessel until it is free of starch. Then drain away water and keep the rice aside.
2. Now in pressure cooker take sufficient water. Here we are using 1 cup rice which requires 1 cup water.
3. Add a pinch of salt.
4. Let the rice cook. This will take about 15 minutes.
5. Take care that the rice is not over cooked. Check with a fork later.
6. Meanwhile, as the rice cooks, prepare the veggies.
7. Slice the veggies- onions, capsicum, beans, chilies, garlic, ginger, carrot nicely and keep them aside.
8. When the rice is done, drain away the excess water and keep aside the filtered rice.
9. Heat oil in a kadhai.
10. Now add chopped garlic and ginger. Saute for about 1 minute.
11. Next, we add onions and green chilies and sauté for 1 minute.
12. Once you can smell the nice aroma of fried spices add salt, little bit sugar (1/2 tsp) and sauté for 30 seconds.
13. Now add carrots and beans and green peas. As these veggies take more time to cook, we add these first. Saute these on high flame for 5 minutes.
14. Let these veggies lose moisture and shrink.
15. Next, we add capsicum. Saute for about 2 minutes.
16. Pour 1 tsp of soy sauce.
17. Now sprinkle some pepper powder.
18. When you see all the veggies are fried nicely, add the cooked rice.
19. Stir well and mix all the ingredients well.
20. Saute for about 5 more minutes till rice becomes fried.
21. In the end, add very thinly cut spring onions.
22. Turn off the flame right after this.
Now the hot veg fried rice is ready!
How To Serve?
- Serve fried rice hot in a flat plate or in a bowl.
- It goes well with simple veg salad and pickles.
- For garnishing, add some previously deep fried crunchy onions on the top.
Tips and Precautions:
- Different veggies can add all the more different taste to fried rice. Just make sure veggies are chopped thinly. The smaller the chopped veggies, the better the taste.
- For Chinese version of fried rice, all colors of capsicum- yellow, green and red suit best. Adding only capsicum and onions also make very tasty Chinese fried rice.
- Some people add Ajinomoto even in homemade fried rice. As this ingredient is very harmful to your health, I suggest it should be used in small amount or totally avoided.
- Soy Sauce, vastly used in making fried rice in restaurants, is also a harmful ingredient that disturbs functioning of hormones. So make sure you add not more than 1 tsp of this sauce.
- As some people like it chili, they add 1 tsp of green chili sauce as well. In that case, balance the amount of green chili and pepper.
The best thing about Fried rice is it’s simplicity in preparation. It can be made with rice cooked previously or leftover rice from previous day’s meal. It can be had as a complete meal or as a main course with other dishes like veg Manchurian or soup. If you have rice remaining after lunch, make it into fried rice for your tea time hunger.
While some like the rice to be only slightly brown, others like it brown by adding sauces like tomato, soya and chili sauce. Squeeze a half lemon over the servings and see how it gets tastier.
Fried rice is one dish we all like to experiment with. From adding boiled eggs or fried eggs, you can make your own version of this dish.
Nice step by step instructions to prepare veg fried rice. I will try this recipe by the end of this week. Thanks for sharing.
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