I often try to recreate food I eat at restaurants; this recipe I am about to share dates back to a lunch I had almost two years ago in Thailand. I went to Phuket for my honeymoon in January 2016 and during that trip, the delicious Thai cuisine was irresistible to the point I was ready to have Green curry for breakfast.
One afternoon, after visiting the famous Chaithararam Temple, we decided to walk to a roadside joint, incredibly similar to a Pakistani dhaba. That is where I first had the authentic Thai edition fried rice , and was smitten by the layers of flavour that every grain of rice carried. Since after that experience, I have made countless online searches for the perfect “Thai fried rice” recipe, but nothing really worked until recently.
Most online recipes for Thai fried rice for some reason ask you to add soy sauce, and that is one ingredient which is not as common in the Thai kitchen as it is in the Chinese. Once I stopped adding soy sauce to my Thai fried rice experiments, the taste started becoming increasingly like the fried rice I had at the joint in Phuket.
I think the recipe I am sharing tastes at least 90% same. 🙂 I have added tofu to it – that is because I am anemic and I try to eat iron rich foods like Tofu in as many of my meals as convenient. You may omit Tofu.
Without further ado, let’s get right into it.
Ingredients:
- Oil (1/4 cup)
- Minced garlic (3 tablespoons)
- Onion (1)
- Green bell pepper (1)
- Tofu (100 grams)*
- Prawns – frozen or fresh (250 grams)
- Fish sauce (2 1/2 tablespoons)
- Oyster Sauce (3 1/2 tablespoons)
- Salt (to taste)
- Sugar (1/2 teaspoon)
- Crushed thai chilli or the regular one (1 teaspoon)
- Green chillies (5)
- Eggs (2)
- Rice (4-5 cups)
- Sriracha (3 tablespoons)
Method:
- Heat some oil and sauté mince garlic.
- Meanwhile chop the onion and green bell pepper. After the garlic is fragrant, add veggies and cook.
- When the vegetables are 1/4th cooked, add prawns. Cook on high heat so the water from the prawns evaporates without making the bell pepper soggy.
- Once the shrimp is cooked through, add both sauces, chopped green chili, crushed chili pepper, sugar, and salt to taste.
- Push aside the whole mixture, and scramble two eggs on the side.
- Add cooked rice and Sriracha. Mix until well-combined. 🙂
Tips:
- If using tofu, slice and marinate it in one teaspoon each oyster and fish sauce. Before heating up oil, pan cook the marinated tofu. You don’t need oil for browning the tofu in a non-stick pan. Remove from the pan after cooked, and add it just before adding the sauces.
- Garnish with crushed peanuts, basil leaves, and/or cucumber if you have that on hand. I did not. 😛
- To keep the meal healthy, you could easily swap the rice with quinoa or bulgur.
- Boneless chicken also will work great in this recipe.
