Bacon Fried Rice Recipe

Yes, that's right, BACON.

I love fried rice because it's a great way to use up a bunch of whatever random ingredients you have floating around in your fridge. One week in our house, that ingredient just happened to be bacon. And history was made. This is NOT a low-fat or low-sodium meal! Not at all.

Really, it's just a basic fried rice recipe, but you use bacon as the meat, and as an added bonus, you fry everything in the rendered bacon fat. Yep, fried in lard. Like I said: NOT low fat!

The 3 tricks I've learned for good fried rice are:
1. use leftover rice. It needs to be on the dry side to fry well. Wet rice just kind of stews...
2. don't be shy with the oil. It makes a big difference.
3. have everything ready to toss in the pan before you start. Things move quickly, it's good to be prepared. (take a minute to loosen up the rice a little so it's easy to just dump in. It tends to clump together and stick in the pot, and you don't want to be messing with that when it's time to put it in!)

Okay, here is the recipe. Remember: since this is a basic fried rice recipe, you can substitute any other meat/tofu for the bacon, and use regular cooking oil, and you've got yourself regular old fried rice! Get creative!

Ingredients:

• Leftover (cooked) rice (it's important for it to be "leftover" because it needs to have time to dry out. Cook a fresh pot the day before and leave it in the fridge overnight if you have to).
• Chopped veggies (I used carrots, green bell pepper, and mushrooms, because that's what I had in my fridge. It's kind of a "toss in whatever you need to use up" sort of a thing, so use whatever sounds good. Frozen works just fine in a pinch)
• 1 or 2 eggs, beaten (you get a nicer texture with 2, or 3 if you've got a lot of rice, but you can get by with less)
• Sliced fresh ginger
• Minced garlic
• Soy sauce
• BACON (cut into small pieces. I had about 1/2 a pound, but you could do it with more or less. I usually only have about 1/4 pound when I make it.)

1. Cook the bacon, rendering out all the fat. Remove the bacon pieces, keeping the fat in the pan.

2. Use the bacon fat to fry the chopped veggies (high heat). Remove the veggies, reserving the grease.

3.  Put several tablespoons of the bacon grease back in the pan to heat on high (I had a TON of grease, so I had to remove some, but depending on the fat content of the bacon, you might need to supplement with regular cooking oil. You want enough to generously cover the bottom of the pan, but you don't want a deep puddle. You can always add more, it's much harder to drain it back out...)

4. Toss in the ginger and garlic, stirring constantly for about 30 seconds (leave in)

5. Pour in the egg

6. IMMEDIATELY add rice (this is why you should loosen it up before you start, you need to add it before the egg starts cooking), stirring to coat with egg and oil. Cook for a few minutes, until egg looks cooked.

7. Add the bacon and veggies back in.

8. Drizzle with soy sauce, mixing in until just barely golden brown. 

Before soy sauce

9. Cook another minute, stirring constantly, and you're done! Enjoy!

After soy sauce: ALL DONE!!!