BEST Japanese Fried Rice Recipe (焼き飯 - Yakimeshi)

Most Asian countries have some version of fried rice to use up leftovers and Japan is no exception. Today I'm going to be showing you how to make my version of yaki meshi so stick around. Welcome back to No Recipes. I'm Mark Matsumoto and I'm here to show you how to elevate your everyday meals so smash that subscribe button so you don't miss out. Yaki meshi literally means pan-fried rice and like its cousin yakisoba, it's originally a Chinese dish. In fact, depending on what part of Japan you're in, you may hear of it referred to as chahan, which is the Chinese word for fried rice. Unlike the original, yaki meshi is made with Japanese short grain rice and there's a few tricks to working with this stickier rice so let's get started. Our ingredients are cooked short grain rice that's left to go stale in the fridge for a few days, eggs, ham, and scallions. We're also going to be using some vegetable oil, salt, black pepper, soy sauce, and sesame oil. The first thing you want to do is crumble the cooked rice. I recommend using leftover rice that's been in the fridge for at least two days. This gives the starch in the rice a chance to retrograde, which makes it a lot easier to crumble. Okay, let's go ahead and break the eggs into a bowl and then I'm going to beat them with chopsticks until they're uniform in color. If you're not into chopsticks, a fork or a whisk will work fine as well. For the ham, we're just going to chop it up into a quarter inch dice. I'm using pork but turkey or something of the plant-based persuasion will work just fine. Next, I'm going to chop the scallions. These are Japanese scallions so they're much thinner than the ones you find in the US but regular scallions or chives will all work fine. Our prep's done so let's start cooking. I've got a hot frying pan over medium-high heat and I'm going to add a splash of oil and just give that a swirl around. Then we're going to add the egg and I'm going to let that bloom for just a bit before I give it a quick scramble. Next, we're going to go in with the rice. The raw egg will help break up any remaining clumps of rice you have so you want to add the rice before the egg is fully cooked. Go ahead and use a wooden spoon or a spatula to break up the egg and rice until there are no big clumps of either. Okay, the clumps are gone so let's go ahead and add the ham and toss that around until it's well distributed. Then we're going to season the rice with salt and pepper. Be sure to sprinkle it evenly over the rice or you're going to end up with areas that are too salty. Now comes the fun part. Let's give that a few tosses to distribute everything. I'm no tossing ninja but the motion is to shove your arm up and out like you're about to toss the pan to someone. This gives the rice forward momentum. Then a quick upward flick of the wrist redirects the momentum so the rice on the bottom of the pan flips up and over the rice on top. This technique helps anything you're stir-frying or sautéing to brown more evenly. Some frying pan shapes are easier to toss food in than others and this is my favorite shape with a gentle upward slope and a curled lip. You can check out my favorite frying pans on my Amazon store which I'll drop a link to in the description below. For the soy sauce, you want to pour it around the rim of the pan. This puts it in direct contact with the hot pan which caramelizes it almost instantly allowing you to coat the rice rather than having the soy sauce soak into the rice. Now I'm just going to toss this until the rice is uniform in color and it's got this wonderful toasty aroma. To finish this off, I'm going to go ahead and drizzle over some nutty toasted sesame oil for flavor. I'm also going to sprinkle on a generous portion of chopped scallions for color. A few more tosses and we're done! Okay, let's go ahead and get this plated up. If you want to be fancy, you can press the rice into a bowl like this. This lets you unmold it into a perfect dome of delicious carbs. Or you could just dump it onto the plate. It's going to taste the same in the end. Since yakimeshi is made with short grain rice, it has a more toothsome texture than other fried rice. It's such a simple dish and yet a few tricks like tossing the rice in a hot pan with soy sauce creates a mouth-watering pan-fried flavor. Yakimeshi makes for a delicious side for other Japanese-style Chinese dishes like gyoza or ebi chili, but it's also a delicious lunch on its own. I've shown you a really basic version of yakimeshi, but there's so much room to improvise on the vegetables, protein, and seasonings. So I hope you have fun with this. If you enjoyed this video, please support us by giving this a big thumbs up. And if you have friends that are into rice, send them a link to this video so they can check it out too. I want to thank all of you guys for watching these videos and leaving me comments. It's what keeps me motivated in creating new videos. So keep them coming. All right, I've got a plate of yakimeshi with my name on it. So I'll catch you in the next one. Check us out on Instagram at no recipes. All right, I've got a plate of yakisoba. No? All right, I've got a plate of yakisoba, which is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word for fried rice.