Make Your Pork Fried Rice Much Faster With One Simple Swap

When you make pork fried rice at home or order it from your neighborhood Chinese spot, the meat component is often char siu. The ingredient is a Cantonese-style barbecue that is usually made with pork butt or shoulder, and therefore is time consuming to make from scratch to add to rice. You can make the starchy dish easier with last night's leftover pork chops, but we have an easy swap to make pork fried rice at home much faster: ground pork.

Hear us out — you'll still achieve a savory flavor by using ground pork to take advantage of the original ingredient. Just like other ground meats, though, it will cook far faster than pork butt or shoulder. You can even use the same pan to cook the ground pork, then add the rice and other ingredients to make dinner clean up quicker too. Use leftover rice, and you can have pork fried rice on the table even faster. To help reduce this week's grocery bill, a package of ground pork will likely come out cheaper compared to the larger cuts like pork shoulder.

Start with our easy fried rice recipe, which you can make even easier with leftover rice or even a microwaved option if you really need dinner in a pinch. Cook down the onion, then add ground pork before you add the carrots and broccoli. For every four servings, use about eight ounces of ground pork. To give the ground pork the most flavor, season it as you cook and break it down into smaller pieces with a spatula. Some seasoning options to consider are garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper for heat, white pepper, or Chinese five spice powder. If there's a lot of liquid, drain it off; otherwise, the rice should soak up the fat and flavor later. Follow the rest of the recipe, and you should have a meal on the table in under 20 minutes.

There are many other tips to make restaurant-quality fried rice, even when you use this time-saving hack. For example, the reason day-old rice works well is because it's drier and will absorb the flavors of the dish without getting mushy during the process. Other ingredients common in Chinese cooking like soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, or grated ginger are effortless ways to add more flavor without increasing the cooking time of your fried rice with ground pork.