Chicken Bacon Fried Rice

There has been a wonderful flurry of recipes lately on the family blogs, so I thought I'd post one of my own. Please excuse the detail here, but I'm one of those annoying fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-hardly-ever-measure-anything type of cooks, so when I made this recipe tonight, I tried to measure everything and take detailed mental notes, so it could be duplicated by anyone. Again, the English-major wordiness is coming through:

Chicken Bacon Fried Rice
cook these separately:
8 cups cooked white rice (start with about 2-1/2 to 2-3/4 c. dry rice, then add double the water & cook until the water is absorbed & the rice is soft)
3 chicken breasts, cut into chunks and cooked in skillet with 1 or 2 Tbsp. oil
8 oz. bacon, cooked, drained, & chopped
5 eggs, scrambled, season with salt & pepper (cook 6, if you really like eggs)

cook these all together:
3 stalks celery, chopped
4 to 5 stalks green onions, chopped
3 teaspoons minced garlic (I buy mine pre-chopped in a jar), or 3 to 4 finely chopped cloves garlic
1-1/2 cups frozen peas & carrots (bag of veggies in the freezer section)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup soy sauce (add more if it's not salty enough)

cooking directions
1. Cook the rice. Completely cool and set aside. Otherwise, you will have a mushy mess when you combine everything in the end. This is a step you can do ahead of time, or the night before, so that it all comes together quickly when you get home from work, or running errands. Ditto for the chicken and bacon.
2. Cook the chicken, bacon, and eggs each separately and set aside.
3. Put 1 or 2 Tbsp. oil in your main cooking pot. Stir-fry all the veggies & garlic until they are heated through and a little soft, but still mostly crunchy.
4. Add the brown sugar & soy sauce. Cook for about a minute or two, just so the sugar dissolves and it heats & coats everything.
5. Add the chicken, bacon, & eggs. Mix.
6. Add the rice. Turn off the heat and toss everything together.
7. Enjoy!!!

Recipe alterations - Take out the chicken or bacon and add ham, or just add more veggies and make it a vegetarian dish. Take out veggies you don't like, and add some that you do. Whatever. As long as the rice to sugar/soysauce ratio stays the same (plus/minus some soy sauce according to your saltiness preference, I think you can alter anything else.


This recipe made a huge pot of fried rice, and this was all that was left! Sorry about the non-professional-cookbook photo, but trust me, it's totally yummy!