How To Make Chinese Tomatoes and Eggs Stir Fry (番茄炒蛋)

Hey, everybody, I'm in a really good mood tonight because it just started to rain. It's thunderstorming even. And I've been waiting all day for this. You know how much I love rain? I love thunderstorms. And the forecast today said it was going to start raining at like 1 p.m. Then it said 2 p.m., then 3, then 4. Now it's like 8.30 p.m. It finally started to rain. It's really cool. I just saw the lighting. This is awesome. What we're going to make today is something I love dearly. It's one of my favorite dishes in the whole wide world at Kitchen Knots. And it's so super easy to make. So today we are making tomatoes and eggs. And what I love about this dish, first of all, like I said, it's super simple. But also it goes so well with rice. I love rice. Every time I go to a Chinese restaurant, I have to have rice dishes. But I hate it when the dishes I get are really dry and it really doesn't go with the rice. You know what I mean? Like the dish is dry and the rice is dry. So when you put those together, it really doesn't balance well. I love dishes that are really saucy. And I love it when the rice soaks up all the juice of that dish. Then the rice itself becomes elevated. Anyway, I've been cooking this dish since I was a little kid. I think every single Chinese person has their version of this recipe. Because we all love it so much and I think you will as well. So let's get started. First of all, this is what you need to cook the dish. I have three tomatoes here, medium to large size tomatoes. And I have four eggs. So your ratio should always be, however many tomatoes there are, just add one more egg to it. You need one scallion. You need three teaspoons of salt. Two tablespoons of sugar. Cooking oil, of course. And you need two empty bowls and of course a big plate for after the dish is done. So first of all, what you're going to do is chop up the scallion. So there you go. And then what you're going to do is take one of the bowls and crack all the eggs into the bowl. Then grab a pair of chopsticks and give this a good whisk. If an egg shell falls in here, a really good trick is just to wet your fingers with water and the egg shell will actually just stick to your finger. You can pull it right out. So give that a good whisk just like you're making scrambled eggs. So then set that aside. The next thing we're going to do is slice up the tomatoes. And this is something you really want to be careful about because a lot of times when you slice the tomatoes, a lot of juice is going to escape. And we don't want that because this dish is really about the tomato juice. We want to retain as much of that as possible. So I'm going to show you guys this really cool trick. If you're looking at a tomato, if you run your fingers like this, you can feel that this is not smooth. This is not flat. It goes up and down, up and down, up and down. So what you want to do is when you cut the tomato, you want to slice it where the surface of the tomato is dipping. I'm going to show you why. So when I do that, you see here, not a lot of the juice is escaping. This is how you can retain most of the tomato juice. You want to slice it like this. Just slice this into wedges. And when you do this, not a lot of the juice is going to escape from the bottom of the tomato. And as soon as you slice each tomato half, take them and put them into one of your empty bowls. And this way, if the juice is going to run, it's going to run into a bowl and you can still use that. Oh, by the way, make sure you get rid of this part first. Yeah, we don't need that. Again, take a look. When I sliced it, not a lot of the juice is going to run out. And you do want to slice the wedges kind of thin because we want the juice to come out when we cook it. All right, once we crack the eggs and chopped everything up, we're ready to cook. Go ahead, take your pan and turn the heat up to a medium high. Take your cooking oil. You can use olive oil or regular vegetable cooking oil, whatever you want. We're going to go ahead and put two tablespoons in there and just let the oil heat up. All right, when that's ready to go, go ahead and dump your eggs in. Basically, at this point, you're scrambling an egg. You don't want to cook this too much. You want to cook this until there's no liquidy eggs left. As soon as you get to that point, go ahead and take this out. And we're going to toss two tablespoons of cooking oil in there. And at this point, your pan should still be pretty hot, so it's not going to take too long for this to heat up. And what you want to do is go ahead and toss in your chopped up scallions. All right, give that a stir. As soon as that's in there, you can go ahead and throw the tomatoes in. Make sure you get all that nice juice in there. And what you want to do in the beginning is not stir this too much. You want to let the tomatoes sit because then its juice is going to start oozing out. I'm going to go ahead and put the lid on this pan and let it cook like that for about two minutes. I forgot to mention this in the beginning, guys, but before you start this dish, make sure you're cooking your rice already because this is really quick and you want to make sure that your rice is ready to go as soon as this is done because you'll want to eat this right away. Okay, two minutes is up. We're going to go ahead and toss in our salt onto the tomatoes. The reason I'm only putting salt on the tomatoes is because tomato juice is going to go into the eggs, so the eggs are going to absorb a lot of the juice and that's when the flavor is going to soak in. So I do that and then I toss in my sugar because as you cook tomatoes, tomatoes tend to get a little sour. So you want to balance that out with sugar. You see how the juice is flowing out and this is looking absolutely fantastic. Now all you got to do is toss the eggs in. All right, break that apart. Make sure all the eggs touch and soak up the nice tomato juice. Make sure you're breaking apart the eggs. Don't let like one single big chunk of eggs sit in there because the eggs have to soak up the flavor from the juice. All right, this is looking absolutely fantastic. It's looking gooey. That's the way I like it. This dish needs to be really saucy because that's one of the biggest appeals for this dish and as soon as it goes in for about 30 seconds, as soon as you feel like you mixed the eggs in well, it's done. Shut off your fire and serve this on a plate. What you can do now is chop up a little more of your scallions and just garnish it on top with that and there you go. Stir fry tomatoes and eggs. Now of course, this is the dish you need to eat with a nice bowl of rice. Don't try eating this dish on its own. It's too saucy and make sure when you're serving this dish, use a spoon because you got to get all that nice juice from the tomatoes. So there you go. Get some of that nice juice in there. Let that soak into the rice and that's what makes this dish so awesome. Oh, this is so awesome. This is awesome. The rice is so delicious because the juice gets in there. Because we didn't cook it that long, the eggs are still nice and fluffy. It's soaked up all the nice flavor of the tomatoes. You can also vary this dish's taste a lot by the amounts of salt and sugar you add into it. I do recommend three teaspoons of salt, but if you don't want that much sugar, maybe try one tablespoon or maybe one and a half instead of two. If you never had this dish before, you are going to fall in love with this. It's so delicious. It's so hearty and it's so easy to make. And the ingredients are super simple. It's really nutritious. I mean, what's not good for you? Tomatoes, eggs, everything's good for you. Really guys, go try this recipe out. This is one of the few vegetarian dishes I can eat that I don't need to add any meat into it. It's still so satisfying. But you know what I do need in this? Yeah, let's do it. Let's go ahead and drizzle some of my hot oil onto this dish. Yeah, red on red. Yeah, I like that. That's good. Now, this dish is going to be more awesome. I'm so excited. Mmm. Oh, that's incredible. You know what it is also? Is that my hot oil has sesame oil in it. If you guys also want, after this dish is done, sprinkle some sesame oil onto it. It's going to really kick this dish up a notch. It really gives it another layer of flavor. And those of you who love spicy, definitely put hot oil on this dish. This dish is meant to be paired up with hot oil. It's sweet. It's savory. It's spicy. It's perfect. You'll never get tired of this dish. I've been eating this dish since I was like four. Alright guys, definitely go try this dish out. I also put the recipe in the description box below. Also, the recipe to my hot oil is also down there. I get the sense of nostalgia because this is what my grandma used to make for me. I'm so happy right now. I got the thunderstorm outside. I hear the rain. I'm eating one of my favorite dishes. I'm going to go watch some Friends on Netflix. I mean, what more can you ask for? You guys ever seen the movie Happy Gilmore and he goes to his happy place? This is my happy place right here. Alright guys, thanks so much for watching. See you later.