My fried rice can put me in a place of exceptional happiness and delight. And it is not because mine is better than the one served in restaurants. I used to pack fried rice for my daughter to eat in school. I thought nothing about my fried rice till she shared some with her classmate.
I discovered last night that my daughter's friend still enjoy eating my fried rice. So, I decided that I should teach it. I hope that I will one day get to eat my daughter's or her friend's fried rice and be able to praise them for their efforts; which will lead this teacher to another of her fried rice paradise realm.
This is another variation of the fried rice with additional ingredients included.
Receiving thumbs up for my fried rice, made me feel that all my efforts to learn how to make it taste better have not been wasted. There is a Chinese idiom, “活到老，学到老”. It means one is never too old to learn. So, no matter your age, you will always be a student, exploring life experiences to learn new things. I hope that I will always be able to share something useful or interesting or new in my writings.
For someone who hates to see food wasted, let's start with this suggestion. When you attend wedding dinners, bring home the last dish served which is usually fried rice with sausages. By the time it is served most of the guests at your table will already be too full to eat it. Moreover, it will be followed by dessert which most would prefer to end the event with.
When it is time for you to heat it up to eat the next day, add white rice and an egg into it as they tend to be salty. Use your flair to make it "up to your taste".
I am Hainanese and the type of soup my family members boil are very basic with just meat or seafood and vegetables. My mother-in-law (MIL) was a Hakka but she often boiled soup the Cantonese way. So, her soups were more flavourful compared to what were served by my side of the family. You will understand by looking at the additional ingredients she used in boiling her ABC soup compared to only the basic ingredients we use to boil ours.
When I boiled the ABC soup my MIL way, my sister who is the cook in the family, said that it is too fishy for her taste.
My MIL was also very good at boiling herbal soups which my family do not fancy drinking. These are some of the ingredients she used in her herbal soups.
So, I am expected to be able to take care of my family's health by boiling nutritious and nourishing soups. But instead of buying the herbs in large quantities separately, I tend to buy prepackaged Chinese herbal soup mix from herbal shops or from the grocery.
When my children were younger, my favourite soup to make was Bak Kut Teh because it is herbal and a great all-in-one meal. I will serve it with rice and fresh lettuce. If I boil it the way my MIL boiled it, it will take 2 to 4 hours and require about 15 herbal ingredients. You can see how it is done by watching this video by Grace of Nonya Cooking.
I tend to use pre-packaged Bak Kut Teh sachets. One of the brands I use is A1. All prepackaged Chinese herbal soup mix comes with cooking instructions printed on the packaging. This one is from A1 Bak Kut Teh.
Ten bowls of water is about 1.8L but I would rather use less and add accordingly after tasting the soup. It is suggested that the soup be left to simmer for 30 minutes after the water is boiling. This is because the herbs in the pack have been grinded into powder form. The other brand I prefer is from Mo Sang Kor as not all the herbs in the pack have been grinded. You do not have to follow the instructions to a tee. You can boil it further if it is not tasty enough or if the meat is not cooked tender enough. You can also add water if you think that the soup flavour is too herbal for your liking. You can apply this principle to any soup you boil.
You can refer to the list of ingredients and useful tips shared by Grace on her website for boiling Bak Kut Teh. These are the ingredients I like to add when I use the pre-packed herbs.
I was taught to use a whole garlic to clean the intestine but I prefer to smash it first before inserting it through. You can watch this video to see the cleaning process.
The intestine boiled in the soup, can be removed to cook another dish. My favourite way to cook it is with:
-garlic oil -soya sauce -dark soya sauce
-sugar -white pepper
I cook it with 2-3 tablespoon of water till the sauce is reduced and thickened, because the sugar has caramelized, to coat the intestine.
As I made the soup to serve 4 in the family, I added 4 boiled eggs to it. You can add as many as you want as it will not affect the flavour of the soup. Just make sure that there is enough liquid to boil the additional ingredients you added to the soup. Take note that too much liquid added will reduce the flavour of the herbal soup mix.
There are many ways to boil Chinese soup. You can find many more techniques and useful tips from The Chinese Soup Lady. Their information are very clear as shown in this chart the Tong sisters shared.
What are some easy meals I can make for cheap? I answered this question on Quora and decided to share it here because there are many useful links in them.
There are many easy meals that you can make cheap if you use less ingredients in the dish. I managed to find many such recipes and saved them on Pinterest.
What is the point of making it cheap but there are leftovers to throw away? So, throw away less food by using leftovers from last dish or learn to cook just enough or learn to do “planned-overs”, that is, cooking in excess so that your can create another dish with them.
"Cooking for One or Two" by Food and Nutrition Specialist, Julie Garden-Robinson, Ph.D., LRD provides a guideline on how to reduce the ingredients in your recipe if you are cooking smaller portions. You will find many tips on using your leftovers at Frugal Leftover Cooking Ideas.
You should also try to figure out ways to use less utensils to cook. If you watch cooking programmes by chefs like Michael Smith on TV, you can pick up useful tips from him. He used vegetables, such as, carrots, potatoes and onions to replace the rack you need for roasting. By placing your meat on top of the vegetables you do not have an oily rack to clean up. Doesn’t that make cooking your meal cost saving too since you are using less water and time for cleaning? You can even clean up the sauce off your pans by using leftover rice or bread.
Find ways to use less energy to cook. I use a large soup pot, and place a smaller metal pot inside to cook my rice and another to boil soup. On top of the pot, I can also place a plate of fish or chicken or minced pork to steam. Food keep warm in the steamer so that you do not have to reheat them.
If I use the rice cooker to cook or a pot to boil my soup, I will try to include a dish that requires steaming.
Plan meals for the week so that you can buy your ingredients in bulk which make them cheaper. Stock less perishable food and save by buying what is seasonal where you are.
If you like Chinese cooking, here are some recipes for cheap meals I created for my family. I did some of them in slides so that my children can learn to cook too.
How cheap can you get if you are able to find ways to make use of food scraps to cook? Check out the food scraps used in making this Vegetable Broth.
When I was young my family used to collect a bag of cake scraps from a confectionery nearby. These are cut offs from the sides of baked flat cake layers. I discovered that if you crumbled the cake and mix it up with frosting, you can make Popsicle like these.
