What's Cookin'

A few weeks ago, one of my co-workers brought in some homemade fried rice for a going away party we were having.  She's part Filipino, so this is sort of what would be called a "family recipe."  Except there is no actual recipe.  There is basically just a method.  I asked her to explain the method to me, and am now putting it down here as a recipe.  She said to start with whatever meat you want to put in there and season it with whatever spices you want, so I chose shrimp and beef seasoned with garlic powder, cumin, and black pepper.

SARA'S FILIPINO-STYLE FRIED RICE

Ingredients:
• 1 cup dry rice of your choice (I chose Basmati as it's my favorite)
• 1 lb cubed stew meat
• one 12 oz package precooked medium shrimp
• 2 cups water
• approx 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion
• 1 package frozen mixed veggies
• 1/2 tbsp Kikkoman low sodium soy sauce

Directions:
• cook the rice in your preferred method.  For ease of prep, I simply followed the package's directions on how to cook rice in the microwave.  Once the rice is cooked, set aside so it can cool to room temperature.

• next, brown your meat in a non-stick skillet with some of the oil.

• when the meat is fully browned, add your frozen veggies, still frozen.  Cook until the veggies are tender and fully mixed with your meat.

• remove meat and veggies, with juice, from pan and set aside.  Put the rest of the oil in the pan and turn up the heat.  Heat the oil until it is HOT HOT HOT.  Add the rice and soy sauce and fry the rice.  Be careful to scrape the bottom of the pan to keep the rice from sticking/burning.

• add the meat and veggies back into the pan and mix with the rice.  Do NOT put all the meat/veggie juice into the rice or it will be soggy.  You do not want soggy fried rice.  Trust me.  I added about half of the juice into the rice/meat/veggie mixture.  Cook the meat, veggies and rice until they are fully combined with each other.

• Now, I got a little mixed up when I was cooking and sort of skipped a step.  I say sort of because I prepped the onion by rough chopping it and setting it aside.  HOWEVER, I completely spaced on cooking it when I was "supposed" to.  Per my friend, you're supposed to cook the onions IN the rice as you are frying it.  So, since I forgot to do this, I just sauteed the onions by themselves and then added them into the mix.  No biggie.

This is surprisingly a fairly healthy dish.  You can add more rice, if you wish, but in my dish the rice is just sort of an add in and not the main focus of the dish.  Also, I made this as a main dish, not a side dish.  If you're doing it as a side dish, then I would suggest doubling the amount of servings to 10 instead of the 5 I did.