hey everyone welcome to pai's kitchen so today i have one of my favorite non-thai rice dishes to share
with you japanese garlic fried rice so even though this dish is Japanese I became aware of it living
in Thailand where many hot pot restaurants or one of those self barbecuing restaurants would
have it on the menu as a side dish and I loved it and it's like one of those satisfying rice dishes
it's really hard to stop eating it's really simple and it's a good thing to have in your repertoire
when you want like a side dish it's a little more interesting than just plain rice but it's
flavorful enough that you can have it on its own as a meal with maybe like an exercise of protein
that you cook up so super versatile dish easy to make let's get started so let's talk garlic
first so for this recipe I'm using an entire head of garlic some of it about 40% of it I slice up
in two garlic chips so if you're in a rush don't have time you don't have to bother with the garlic
chips you can just make the rice but it's a nice crunchy extra garlicky touch if you've got the
time and then the rest of it I just finely finely mince it like this okay the sauce is really simple
it could be as simple as soy sauce and salt I am using Japanese soy sauce of course and just FYI
this is the one that I use it doesn't have to be this one I also have a little extra secret
ingredient that I like to add in my garlic fried rice I'm using dashi powder orhan dashi so this is
basically the Japanese fish stock the base stock will they use in a lot of their different dishes
in powdered form so it's like the convenience version of instead of making from scratch and
you can get it in a package just like this at the Japanese grocery store or like an Asian grocery
store it's a really handy thing to have on hand because you can quickly make miso soup if you need
it too using that so I've just got a little bit of water here I'm just gonna mix it together or
it would be even better if you used a mini whisk for mixing although this bowl is so small even the
mini whisk is too big okay so that's that if you opt to not use the hon dashi you will need to up
the salt because this is a little bit salty apart from that I just got some eggs and rice for this
you want to use Japanese short brain rice this recipe calls for a cup and a half of short grain
Japanese rice which is conveniently two of those little rice cooker measuring cups if you have
a rice cooker you know what I'm talking about they always come with a little measuring cups
for measuring rice that cup is 3/4 of a regular measuring cup so two of those is one-and-a-half
cups if that's confusing don't worry I will explain it all in detail in the written recipe
which you can check out but conveniently you can just cook a whole pot two cups and use the
whole thing no need to measure weigh the cooked rice afterwards okay when I start by making my
garlic chips and by the way you don't have to do chips you can do like the Thai style fried
garlic as well where you just chop them and then you get little bits of fried garlic as
opposed to sheets of fried garlic which might be easier if you have a hard time slicing them
evenly cuz with the garlic cubes you want to get them as evenly as possible I got a little bit of
oil here just enough to submerge the garlic I'm gonna turn it on and then I'm gonna just drop a
piece of test garlic and then wait till that starts bubbling not too excitedly but there's
you knows a decent amount of bubbling going there you go for this you want to add the garlic when
the oil is already hot so once they go in turn the heat down to low and then let them fry gently on
sort of medium-low heat so that they don't Brown before they are crisp you know what I mean you
want to get them to a point where they have very small amount of bubbling if they're completely
still that's even better that means they are completely crispy and you don't want to get
them to brown because browned garlic is bitter so you want to get two so light gold and Brown
so if you notice ones that have already browned before the rest because they are thinner you can
go in and individually remove them with a tweezer or mini tongs okay you know what the bubbling is
really still now and they're mostly golden there you go and you want to let these cool a little
bit before they will be crisp I am going to saute my minced garlic in butter you can of course just
use oil but if you are going to use oil use that garlic oil that you just obtained from frying your
garlic it'll be extra garlicky so wait till this melt jeez this stove is so hot so fast I have an
electric stove at home that takes an incredibly long time to heat up and so when I come here and
use this burner I'm always caught off-guard how fast things the chopped garlic goes in and when
you're cooking with butter you want to keep the heat on the low side because butter burns rather
quickly so you want to give the garlic lots of time to infuse and soften without burning
the butter just a touch more of that garlic oil okay there we go that looks good oh no so good
the smell of butter and garlic in a place with no ventilation mmm okay and what I'm gonna add also
right now is some black pepper a lot of people like to add black pepper at the end but I find
that if you added the beginning in the fat then it has time to infuse that pepperiness into the
fat which will be which will help carry that pepperiness all throughout the rice so I like
to add it in the beginning sometimes if I remember okay the rice goes in clunk and then our seasoning
spread the seasoning out over the rice so that the liquid will help the rice separate and then you
have less fiddling to do to get everything evenly coated so salt soy sauce and he goes in that's it
now the only thing you need to do is make sure everything is well coated and you can turn the
heat up now because now our butter oops that's the wrong way and now our butter is protected in
the rice so it won't burn now see how instantly that's just got hot so now the technique is you
flip and then any lumps of rice if you see you use the spatula to press down which is why it's really
helpful when you're frying rice to use 8 an angled spatula a lot of straight one look how easy that
comes together I love making fried rice actually with Japanese rice because they're so sturdy ok
so that looks good actually the tiny pieces of white rice makes it look a little prettier too
okay and what you can do if you like sort of the toasted rice flavor you just kind of let
it sit on the pan get it a little bit Brown sing happy birthday to yourself or something and then
flip and then you notice that there's a little bit of browning at the bottom of that rice nice
tasty right there yes ok that's it you're done how easy is that oh my god the eggs don't forget
the eggs so if you put eggs I'm gonna add my eggs right here I'm gonna break the yolks I'll let it
step a little bit I can also move the pan so the egg is sort of sitting more centered on the wok
and then I can once the egg is sort of setting a little you can take this hot rice mother this is
the same as my papaya technique mother the eggs with the rice so that the eggs will sort of hold
on to the rice and it'll also help cook the eggs a little faster let that sit for 30 seconds or so
and then you toss if you all that space where the egg was gonna go to go into it will help
prevent the egg from sticking but I did not do that okay beautiful now really it's done
and you turn it off and then you add a little bit of greenery save a little bit for garnish
at the end toss that in one thing I will add about adding the eggs you can skip the
eggs altogether I have done that and it's fine but I find that adding eggs and fried
rice the egg will help absorb the fat from the rice and make it less greasy tasting so if you
don't like rice to be too greasy fried rice with egg is what you want to do okay all right with
and I like that the egg wasn't beaten so there's like bits of white and yellow mixed together that
remember our fried garlic see how now that they're cool they're completely crispy I think you can
hear how crispy that is okay but before I put on the garlic I like to top it with a little crushed
seaweed or our nori so this is the same stuff that you see on top of okonomiyaki or what's the
other thing I'm thinking of takoyaki they're just crushed seaweed it's it's gonna add a little bit
of flavor but not too much but I think it's super pretty and it makes it look kind of Japanese sea
so instead of you know extra green onions oh and you want to concentrate it in the middle and then
spread it out further oh how cool that looks and you can add more when you eat it and then top it
with our fried garlic chips oh yes look at that how pretty is that okay let's taste it but I'm
gonna eat it straight from the wok because I don't wanna mess this up for my photos when is he your
photo op that later sprinkle little garlic chips in this corner here where I'm gonna eat mmm smells
like I'm telling you about a little bit of dashi already adds the aroma all the texture of that
rice so as you know jasmine rice is usually my go-to and I'm so used to eating fried rice with
jasmine rice but to once in a while half fried rice you see Japanese right it's it's so nice to
have a bit of a achoo to the rice it's a little firmer it's a different experience scarlet key
it's buttery without being greasy because we added that egg and I am telling you that little bit of
dashi powder asks a little sort of Japanese mess to it because it is that flavor that you
recognize in so many Japanese dishes so it really brings that together if you by the way don't want
to use like a powdered stock you want to go from scratch DIY you can cook the rice in dashi that
you make so you make homemade dashi and use that to cook the rice and then that's one way of doing
it without using powdered stuff but I'm telling you whether you have a hot pot or whatever this
is gonna be a great side dish in fact I think I'm just gonna eat a whole bowl of it without
anything else because it's that satisfying so I hope you give this a try the recipe as always
will be on hot Thai Kitchen calm when you make it send me a photo on Facebook Twitter or Instagram
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thank you as always for watching and I will see you next time for your next delicious adventure