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.

Soy sauce fried rice is a dead simple dish, but it tastes way better than it has any right to. The stuff you’re frying is basically just rice — day-old rice is best — and then whatever else you feel like throwing in. Boiled corn, lettuce, shiitake, shrimp, bacon, whatever you’ve got, just dump it in. The soy sauce is the point.