Chicken Fried Rice

I love this fried rice recipe from Cooking Light, but I don't make it that often mostly because for fried rice to turn out well, you need to make the steamed rice the day before and I don't usually know what I am going to make for dinner the day before.   Well, I planned ahead this week and had the steamed rice in the fridge ready to go.  

Photo: Randy Mayor; Styling: Leigh Ann Ross

I use chile garlic sauce from a bottle instead of sambal oelek (which I can never find in the grocery store).   I like the way the chicken or pork is cut into very small pieces when I order fried rice from a restaurant, but I never seem to be able to cut my chicken into small enough pieces to get the same effect. 

The recipe calls for cooking the chicken for one and a half minutes or until slightly browned.   I have found, that I need to cook the chicken for about 7 or 8 minutes before its slightly browned.  After about 2 or 3 minutes, a lot of moisture comes out of the chicken and then it takes about 4 minutes for that moisture to boil off and then another minute before the chicken starts to brown.   Maybe cutting the chicken into smaller pieces would help?

My egg never turns out in a form such that I could transfer it to a cutting board and cut it into smaller pieces.   My egg always turns out mostly scrambled and pretty much in small pieces.

Despite these obvious gaps in my ability to correctly prepare fried rice, the dinner turned out great.   It was really delicious and I had a hard time limiting myself to the serving size of one and a half cups.