Or fried rice wrapped up in an omelet just like my mom used to make
Om Rice topped with Sriracha and Ketchup
Cheap eats, like this omurice are my new passion. It reminds me of all the wonderfully frugal meals my mother would make for us back before my parent’s salary stretched to T-bone steaks. Since I began writing on personal finance for Money Ning and HealthCompare Guide, I’m even more committed to making the best food possible without spending an exorbitant amount.
As far as cheap eats go, it’s hard to beat fried rice wrapped in an omelet, otherwise known as omurice. Up until 10 minutes ago I would have sworn on Kurt Vonnegut’s grave that it was omie rhymes with homie rice, but when I looked it up to get a correct spelling and kept coming up with omurice I called my mother and she said she didn’t know where I got omie rice from because she always called it omurice.
This is not only an inexpensive dinner, but super easy to throw together. My mother used to keep bags of frozen salad shrimp and frozen mixed vegetables on hand. Unlike most recipes I’ve seen written down for fried rice that call for the rice to be cold, this one does just fine using freshly cooked, hot rice.We use medium grain calrose rice, such as Nishiki. It clumps together slightly and makes an appealingly sticky fried rice.
I make this dish a lot the day after we have roast pork, steak, roast beef to stretch the leftover meat into another full meal for us.
I’m so not going to give you a recipe for fried rice, because this is clean out the fridge food. This is just go wild and crazy and throw everything together food. This is you really can’t go wrong as long as you don’t dump a whole bottle of soy sauce into it food.
Pretty much I make a couple of omelets. One or two for the fried rice and one per person to serve. Set aside the prettiest ones for wrapping and chop up the others.
Next, I chop a small onion or half a medium one and when it is starting to soften I throw a cup or two of frozen vegetable medley in there. You could use fresh veggies, but the frozen ones are cheap, more or less as nutritious and dead easy.
When that’s just about done toss in a bit of chopped garlic and cook until fragrant. Add your protein. Today I used some chopped leftover pork and some thawed salad shrimp. We’ve been known to use cubed Spam or leftover steak or chicken or make it completely vegetarian.
Once that’s all hot, put it in a bowl and pour a tablespoon or so of oil into the pan and once that’s hot add your rice. Probably about 1 – 1.5 cups of cooked rice per serving would be good.
Toss that around a bit, add a bit of sesame oil break up the rice clumps and get every nice and hot.
Take that bowl of cooked veggies and meat and add a little bit of soy sauce. Better to add too little than too much, remember you can always add more. I use a mix of regular Kikoman soy sauce and ketjap manis. Add that to the rice and mix everything up until it’s evenly distributed and everything is hot and yummy. Add the chopped omelet and stir again.
Drape one of the omelets inside a small bowl. Pack full of rice. Tuck the edges up over the bottom and turn out onto a plate. Top with some ketchup, sriracha or both. Chow down. You could also just lay the omelet flat on a plate, put the rice inside and roll like a burrito or something. Whatever suits your fancy.
Do you have a favorite way to use leftovers?
Note: post contains affiliate links for the ingredients. You most likely could find everything you need at your grocery store but if you want or need to order from Amazon, I am not opposed to making money off of it. My Yan Yan habit is not cheap, you know.
