Fried Rice and Spice Giveaway

Late at night when there’s nothing to snack on, Jonathan and I have been resorting to fried rice. We seem to always have a carton of stale Chinese rice in the fridge (delish right?) and always have at least one or two eggs and an onion as well. That’s pretty much all you need to make a good batch of fried rice, although we got a little fancy for this one and added zested garlic, ginger and sliced scallions just so we weren’t total barbarians, eating stale rice and fried eggs like dogs.

But this dish really is a last minute, we are broke type of meal. It’s so cheap and easy to make, and the ingredients need not be fresh. Enjoy late-night and try not to worry about how your stomach will feel tomorrow.

Ingredients:
(Serves 2)

2 tbsp oil
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, zested
1 finger length ginger, grated
1 carton stale takeout rice
2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp rice wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sesame oil
2 eggs
1 bunch scallions, sliced

What to do: 

1. Dice onions and saute them in the oil until they are browned and crispy. Lower the heat and sweat out the garlic and ginger until just softened.
2. Add the rice and butter and mix with a wooden spoon. You want the rice to combine with the onion mixture and get a bit crispy as well.
3. Deglaze with the soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil.
4. Add the eggs and scramble them together with the rice using a fork.
5. When the eggs are cooked, add the scallions and stir just to combine. Serve hot!

I love experimenting with new recipes and trying out foods I haven’t made before. I also have a huge collection of cookbooks, most of which sit idly on my bookshelf. I feel kind of guilty about them. Many of them were expensive, were gifts, or were resolutions of mine to cook a broader expanse of cuisines and recipes. They were promises to myself and my family that I would challenge myself to learn more, cook more, do more.  Now, they loom like tomes of guilt, daring me to dust off their pages and take a leap of faith into a new recipe.

I’m sure many of you experience this same guilt, although maybe not as melodramatically as I do. A lot of my hesitance to experimenting with new recipes and cookbooks is the expense. Specifically, herbs and spices. Herbs and spices are some of the most costly ingredients, especially when a recipe calls for ½ teaspoon of sumac. Sumac? Seriously? This is one pretty obscure ingredient, and although commonly used in Middle Eastern cooking, it is used so infrequently in my household and in such a small amount that I have a hard time spending $4.99 on an 8-oz jar that I am certain will expire before I use even a quarter of it.

Here’s where this Spice Giveaway comes in! Cooking Planit is conducting a huge spice giveaway involving 50 bloggers. So that means that myself and 49 other people are each giving away a set of 26 spices. The retail value of the spice collection is about $100. The inspirational value of dusting off those old cookbooks and experimenting? – priceless.

Here’s a list of spices included in the set:

Onion Powder
Rosemary
Nutmeg Powder
Red Pepper Flakes
Coriander Powder
Cayenne Pepper
Ground Cloves
Chinese Five Spice
Turmeric
Curry Powder
Yellow Mustard
Pennsylvania Pepper
Cardamon Powder
Cajun Seasoning
Allspice Powder
Hill Country Chili Powder
Ginger Root Powder
Manzanillo Mexico Seasoning

So basically, over the course of the next few weeks, two bloggers will be launching giveaways each day. That’s two chances a day to win! Our contest will begin on Wednesday, March 13^th, so check back next Monday, March 11^th for details.  In the meantime, be sure to check out these other blogs for details during their contest period and 49 other chances to win. Here’s a list of participants!

2013 Cooking Planit Spice Giveaway Participants

	Start	Stop	Flight 1	Flight 2
1	3/6/13	3/12/13	Sophistishe	Field and Feast
2	3/7/13	3/13/13	The Wicked Noodle	The Cooking Planit Blog
3	3/8/13	3/14/13	The Aliso Kitchen	Slow Down & Savor
4	3/9/13	3/15/13	Chicago Foodie Sisters	Jessiker Bakes
5	3/10/13	3/16/13	My Happily Ever After the End	The Food Yenta
6	3/11/13	3/17/13	Notes from Maggie’s Farm	Food Fash
7	3/12/13	3/18/13	My Kitchen Addictions	What Jew Wanna Eat
8	3/13/13	3/19/13	Bite Sized Blog	Nicole’s Nickels
9	3/14/13	3/20/13	A Busy Mom of Two	Food Squeeze
10	3/15/13	3/21/13	Kasey’s Kitchen	Kitchen Concoctions
11	3/16/13	3/22/13	Daily Ups & Pounds	Lisa Cooking
12	3/17/13	3/23/13	Ditch the Box	Huppie Mama
13	3/18/13	3/24/13	Hungry Hutch	Food Fetish
14	3/19/13	3/25/13	Cook the Blog	Three Diets. One Dinner
15	3/20/13	3/26/13	Sugarfoot Eats	Gear Live
16	3/21/13	3/27/13	CopyKat Recipes	The Mouthy Housewives
17	3/22/13	3/28/13	Burnt Apple	The Butterfly Mom
18	3/23/13	3/29/13	The Mama Report	Ancestral Chef
19	3/24/13	3/30/13	A Food Centric Life	We Like To Cook
20	3/25/13	3/31/13	Dixie Chik Cooks	Baby Boomster
21	3/26/13	4/1/13	Unorganized Mommy of 3	Much Ado About Fooding
22	3/27/13	4/2/13	Better with Butter	The Primlani Kitichen
23	3/28/13	4/3/13	Mother Would Know	California Country Gal
24	3/29/13	4/4/13	Yi Reservation	NY Foodgasm
25	3/30/13	4/5/13	ME Redone	Creative Cullinary

    **I was gifted the prize for this contest.
Our contest is only 1 week long so don’t miss out on the chance to win these awesome spices!

 

Tagged as: Chinese food, Fried Rice, garlic, homemade fried rice, making Chinese at home, onions, rice wine vinegar, scallions, sesame oil, sesame seeds, soy sauce, stale rice, takeout