Good afternoon, folks. Yeah Right was summoned to a pizza battle earlier this week and was unable to facilitate this edition of Sunday Gravy Iron Cook. What kind of foolish fool would you have to be to issue that challenge to our Patriarch of Pizza? I don’t know, but I can only imagine the carnage left in Mr. Right’s way, as he emerged from the kitchen victorious, covered in a fine, red sauce that is equal parts marinara and the blood of his vanquished enemies. I am your Low Commander of the Super Soldiers, and I was left in charge of satisfying your taste buds this week.

If you’re like me, you’re a busy guy. I have to go to work most days, come home to work out, drink beer, watch sports and oversee the heretics in the lightning mines. It can take a lot out of you, and as much as I love a home cooked meal, there isn’t always time. Making frozen stuff is easy, but usually pretty bland and can get old quickly. As someone who is technically an adult, I like to take that existing frozen base and turn it into something that is both tasty and easy to make, with minimal clean up, so that I can get back to making dick jokes on the internet. With just a few simple additives, you too can cause the inner flavor of even a frozen dish to blossom forth, without having to resort to your crystal vial of “confidence.”

Today, I am going to show you one of my favorites: The Enhanced Fried Rice. I typically prefer going with a chicken fried rice base on this myself, but shrimp, vegetarian or otherwise works just as well. It doesn’t really matter where you get this from either, but the key is that you need enough to work with, without needing to make more rice for padding, as that can take time. Look for something close to about 20 oz for your base. I was able to get all of the ingredients from Trader Joe’s, because I’ve talked myself into thinking that anything I get there is healthy, even when that thing is something like this. As such, all of the ingredients I will be using, with the exception of my choice in sauce, can be found at your (hopefully) local Trader Joe’s.

Ingredients:

• 20 oz bag of frozen fried rice
• 2-3 strips of bacon
• Half a medium sized onion
• 4 oz of mushrooms
• 1 cup of frozen sweet corn
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 1/3 cup of chicken stock
• Olive oil
• Half an avocado

Keep in mind that this “recipe” is very loose, and if there is anything that you don’t like, or think would further enhance what you see here, substitutions are very welcome.

First things first: Get all of the frozen stuff out of your freezer! You want to let those things warm up, as it will save on the actual cooking time. You can let those things sit out for about 30 minutes before starting, but if you’re in a hurry or just plain hungry, it’s not absolute must.

Anyway, get out a decent sided wok or large pan and get it warmed up on the stove at medium heat. Start cutting up your bacon into about inch wide pieces. In this case, I used already cooked bacon to save a little time, but cooking up the good stuff is certainly recommended. As soon as that pan is hot, fry up that wonderful, magical animal, and then get to work chopping up that onion and those mushrooms. Make sure you rinse the mushrooms off, after you’ve pulled the stems out. Once the bacon has cooked a bit (you don’t want this fully crispy yet, there is a ways to go,) you should have a nice layer of grease down ready to cook up what you just diced up. Toss them in and watch them sizzle! If you used the precooked stuff like me, or think you need a little more grease, add a dash of the olive oil and stir it up nicely.

This is how it looked after about 4 minutes. You don’t want this to be very greasy anymore, so make sure you don’t overdo it in the previous steps or let it cook down just a little more. Next, add in the frozen sweet corn. I used corn in this case, as this fried rice didn’t have any, but had all of the other veggies I was looking for. If you have any additional frozen veggies or other additives, now is the time to toss those in as well.

If your kitchen doesn’t already smell amazing, it certainly will now. You want anything frozen completely thawed before you move on, but it doesn’t have to be smoking hot. It took me about 3:30 minutes to where I was happy with what was here. Before the next step, I added one of the “cloves” of minced garlic, which was really just a scoop from this wonderful jar of crushed garlic. Stir that up nicely, and then crank your heat up to high for just a minute. Now we’re adding the bulk of the fried rice.

Dump the whole bag on top of your concoction here, and with a wooden spoon or some other type of scooping device, try to get the frozen rice to the bottom, and the rest away from there. It doesn’t have to all be at the top, just not directly touching the pan. You don’t want this to overcook, or you’ll burn some of the better parts of the dish. If you can, try to get the frozen meat from the bag to touch metal, as this will take the longest to defrost. You should come up with something looking like this:

Don’t keep it on the high heat too long, and get it back to medium after you aren’t seeing any remaining steam come from the pan, meaning that everything should be fairly thawed. It is important to stir regularly at this point, as the pan isn’t likely to be very lubricated, (whereas you might be, depending on how many beers you’ve had.) Regardless, you don’t want the rice sticking to the pan and burning, so make sure you get down in there good and keep it moving. I gave it an additional 4 minutes cooking time here, and then added our 1/3 cup of chicken stock. Remember, we are not making soup here, so don’t put in more than a 1/2 cup if you think you want a bit more. Stir this up again to get it basted throughout. I let this cook down for about 3 more minutes.

The nice thing is the stock will coat the pan again, and you won’t have to stir as regularly from here on out, giving you the perfect opportunity to step back and cut up that avocado, if you haven’t already. I like fairly mid-sized cubes here, but you can certainly adjust that according to your preference.

Here’s the home stretch: This is FRIED rice, so you’ve gotta keep it crispy. Add some sparring dashes of your olive oil to the pan, and get it well distributed throughout. (If you happen to like your avocado a little cooked, make a small pile out of the cubes on top and make sure they get a good dosing.) After a minute, add the remaining 1-2 cloves of minced garlic, and give the dish a nice blast from your spice weasel if you have anything else you think would work well here.

Stir this bad boy up really nice one last time, and let everything cook for another 5 minutes. You shouldn’t be getting much pop left from the oil at this point, and as long as everything is well heated throughout, you’ve got yourself a a finished product!

Pull out a bowl or two and serve this up, hot! Top with some of your avocado (if you didn’t cook it in) and if you have any herbs, add them as a nice garnish. I’m a fan of cilantro here, but I didn’t have any at the time. Add in your sauce of choice, and chow fucking down!

This should feed 1-2 people for a nice dinner, or if it’s just you, you can easily store the remaining bit for another meal tomorrow.

So there you have it! This shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes to make, you’ll only have one pan to clean afterwards, and if done correctly, there shouldn’t be anything stuck to it! How about that?