Raid the Fridge Fridays: Chicken egg-fried rice with a sweet 'n' sour salad

Recipes to save for those difficult mid-week lunches

The beauty of Raid the Fridge Fridays is that, quite frankly, anything goes.

No unspoken rules need to be followed.

Lunch is usually a one or two person affair, occasionally a family event during the holidays. All everyone requires is fuel and their stomachs are sedated until they crawl back for an afternoon pick-me-up.

For me, a lunch often involves a salad with a hard-boiled egg, leftovers or maybe a sandwich or toastie.

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Basically, lunch has to remain low key. If we made it into a showstopping occasion like we do with dinner, we’d never get anything done during the day.

However, lunch can become monotonous if you eat the same thing day after day (although, for some reason, the same can’t be said about breakfast), so Raid the Fridge Fridays are here to help, inspiring both you and me - as conjuring up edible dishes with whatever I have in my fridge is certainly a challenge, let me tell you - so that a lunch of eating toast by the kitchen counter becomes a thing of the past.

Save all these upcoming recipes for when you have the ingredients. For instance, cold cooked rice from today’s recipe is not the most convenient to quickly boil between Zoom meetings, so next time you make a curry for dinner, cook extra for an egg-fried rice lunch the next day.

Egg-fried rice should be a staple in our lunch repertoires. Everyone has a store cupboard full of the necessary seasonings and aromatics - soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil and garlic, maybe ginger too - plus eggs and any leftovers you can scrape out of the vegetable drawer. Frozen peas or tinned sweetcorn are also useful and colourful additions.

Don’t sweat the small stuff - I garnished my rather brown egg-fried rice with basil because that was the only herb I had in. Lunch is not the time to worry that you don’t have coriander to hand!

Egg-fried rice, in this case mixed with chunks of chicken breast and streaky bacon, is a salty medley of flavours which is why I also made a quick sweet ‘n’ sour crunchy salad as a side. The crisp cucumber and cabbage balances the soy in the rice, and the rice wine vinegar adds a complementary tang and freshens your palate with every bite. Plus, if your vegetable drawer is alarmingly spartan aside from some sad salad ingredients, which (understandably) you may not want to add to egg-fried rice, this sweet ‘n’ sour salad is the best way to consume a couple of your five a day.

Raid the Fridge Fridays

Here’s to lunchtimes and let’s start with egg-fried rice!

Chicken and bacon egg-fried rice with crunchy sweet ‘n’ sour salad

Total Time: 30 mins

Course: Drinks, Lunch, Main Course

Cuisine: Chinese

Keyword: bacon, chicken, egg-fried rice, salad, sweet and sour

Servings: 2

Ingredients

For the sweet and sour salad

• ¼ red cabbage with the white stem cut away

• ¼ cucumber

• 3 tbsp rice wine vinegar

• 1 tbsp sugar

• 1 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil

• Zest and juice of 1 lime

• Cashew nuts or fresh mint to sprinkle (optional)

For the egg-fried rice

• 200 g cooked rice

• 300 g chicken

• 6 slices of thin-cut streaky bacon

• ½ onion

• ½ a clove of garlic

• ½ tsp MSG (optional - a seasoning you can find in Asian supermarkets)

• 3 tsp soy sauce

• 1 tsp sesame oil plus extra for cooking

• 1 egg

Instructions

First - the salad

• Chop the cucumber into short thin sticks and finely slice the cabbage. Scoop everything into a large mixing bowl. Combine all the dressing ingredients, whisk together and pour over the cucumber and cabbage. Toss to coat everything in the dressing then set aside.

Now, the egg-fried rice

• Slice the onion and prepare a frying pan by setting it over medium heat and adding a splash of sesame oil. Fry the onion for 5 minutes until soft.

• Meanwhile, chop the chicken into bite-sized chunks. Add to the frying pan and sear on every side then pour in a teaspoon of the soy sauce. Stir with a spatula and continue to cook for a couple of minutes.

• Slice the bacon into thin pieces, and add to the pan along with the crushed garlic and the cold cooked rice. Here you can add the MSG if you wish. Stir-fry to cook the bacon and reheat the rice.

• Whisk together the eggs, the remaining soy sauce and the teaspoon of sesame oil. Push all the chicken and rice to the side of the frying pan and pour in half the egg mixture. Leave it to set for 30 seconds, then gently scrape it in chunks into the rice and stir to combine. Repeat with the rest of the egg. If you like big chunks of egg in you rice, cook the second half of the egg until firm then break it up and scatter over the rice.

• Divide the rice between two plates or bowls and garnish with herbs such as chives, basil or coriander. Sprinkle cashews or fresh mint over the salad and serve alongside the egg-fried rice.