Cooking: Soy Sauce Fried Rice (Wang Gang's Improved Version)

I’ve made soy sauce fried rice more times than I can count, but there’s always one fatal problem I can’t solve:

The rice gets stickier the more you stir-fry it—it’s damn near impossible to separate the grains

I’ve watched a ton of fried rice tutorials online, and not a single one explains why this happens. Most just say: use day-old rice.

But I always use day-old rice! So why does it still come out wet? In the end, the ever-reliable Chef Wang Gang gave the answer.

Wang Gang posted a YouTube video yesterday about soy sauce fried rice, and it hit on a few key points:

• After the rice sits overnight, add salt to neutralize its acidity
• Add a suitable amount of cornstarch to the rice to absorb moisture
• Break up the rice clumps before you start stir-frying
• Any add-ins (carrots, green peppers, shiitake mushrooms—whatever) must be diced small. The smaller the better.
• Add the rice last, and once it’s in, add a little oil
• Fried rice must be cooked over high heat—low heat only makes it stickier

These points answered a question I’d had for years: why does fried rice so easily turn into steamed rice…

So I tried it first thing this morning, and sure enough, the result was way better than before. The rice wasn’t perfectly springy, but it was very loose, and the texture was a huge improvement.

As expected of Chef Wang Gang—the man teaches people how to run restaurants.