Fried rice is the most cost effective dish I can think of these days when inflation is so high! All of the price increase and inflation made me think of cost effective meals a lot. Believe it or not, you can save up to 350% by preparing meals and eating at home. And what I’ve been meal-prepping a lot with is fried rice. It is very easy to make a lot of fried rice in one go so it saves a lot of time too. And you can add almost anything in it to make it more nutritious. Today’s recipe features Shrimp Fried Rice. 

The easiest ingredients to add to your fried rice are frozen carrots and peas. I have these in my freezer year round. Next are eggs. Eggs can make fried rice both delicious and nutritious. Additionally you can add pickled vegetables, sausage, other veggies like peppers, squash and celery. Lastly, I highly recommend to mix in chopped green onions for all of your fried rice. It just makes the fried rice much more appetizing.

Tips of making fried rice

1. Use less water to cook the rice. If you have leftover rice, perfect! But if you have to make your rice from scratch, make sure to not add too much water. A 1:2 ratio of rice and water is perfect. Also I recommend using jasmine rice to achieve the perfect rice consistency. 
2. Take home the leftover rice from restaurants. If you happen to eat at a Chinese restaurant the day before, be sure to take home the leftover white rice so you can use it for fried rice. Perfect way to save money! 
3. You don’t necessarily need a wok! I love using a non-stick pan for fried rice and it works great! 
4. Season the add-ins first and then season the rice. To make sure the rice is perfectly seasoned, you can season the add-ins first, then after adding rice, add in additional salt to the rice. 

Shrimp and Egg Fried Rice Recipe

Shrimp is one of the most classic and delicious ingredients for making fried rice. The famous YangZhou Fried Rice is made with shrimp and ham. Today I’m going to show you a simple shrimp fried rice that you can make in 20 minutes! 

Ingredients: 

Shrimp or prawn: 6-8

Egg 1

Garlic 1 clove 

Onion ½ 

Frozen peas and carrots 1/4 cup 

Green onion 1 

Cooked Rice 1.5 cup 

Instructions: 

1. Defrost shrimp/prawn, beat egg, finely chop onion and green onion. Mince garlic. 
2. Add some cooking oil to a hot pan/wok, add onion and garlic. Stir fry until slightly brown.
3. Add in frozen peas and carrots, stir fry until thoroughly cooked. Move everything to one side of the pan.
4. Add in shrimp, frozen peas and carrots. Stir well. Sprinkle ¼ tsp salt on the ingredients. 
5. Add in rice and mix with ingredients well. Sprinkle ¼ tsp salt. 
6. Top with green onion and mix well.

7. Now the delicious shrimp fried rice is ready to serve!