Vegetables Fried Rice (Vegetarian Recipe)

“Healthy and Wholesome Vegetables Fried Rice as Vegetarian Meal. It’s Delicious!”

This year, Vesak Day coincides with Lunar First day of May. Raised as a Buddhism devoter, we had no reason not to take vegetarian for the day! Everyone in the family had to follow vegetarian diet on each and every Lunar 1st and 15th of the Lunar month since young. So, for this special occasion, I cooked fried rice, with assorted vegetables and vegetarian (mock) meat. I called it Vegetables fried rice.

Taste of my vegetables fried rice was varied from the usual fried rice. It relished more like fried yam rice, as I have added yam it my recipe. I don’t call it a yam rice, as I had also the long beans and Chinese cabbages in it. See, it’s a vegetables rice (smile)! It tasted more robust as compared to fried rice with usual ingredients, but never too overwhelming for a great taste. I love the fragrance of yam taste in the palate, it was kinda addictive (chuckling).

Ingredients
2 cups of long grain rice, rinsed and cooked
1 cup of long beans, diced
1 cup of yam, diced
1 cup of Chinese cabbage, chopped into tiny size
½ cup of dried Shitake mushrooms, soaked and diced (abt 4 mushrooms used)
½ cup of mock meat (vegetarian pork), thinly sliced into strips
1 tablespoon of vegetarian (mock) dried shrimps (斋虾米香)

1 tablespoon of light soy sauce
1 tablespoon of vegetarian oyster-flavoured mushroom sauce
1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce
Pinch of salt and ground white pepper to taste
Sprinkles of sugar

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil x 4

Method
1) Heat wok with 1 tablespoon of oil over medium fire, fry mock meat till browned. Remove from wok, and drain on kitchen towel. Set aside.

2) Pre-fry yam dices with 1 tablespoon of oil. When yam is half cooked, for about 3 minutes, sprinkle some water into the wok and cover with lid to expedite cooking. Remove cover after 2 minutes, continue to stir-fry for another 2 minutes till it is cooked and slightly softened. Remove from wok, and set aside. Same step to pre-cook long beans. Set all ingredients aside.

3) Clean wok, add 2 tablespoons of oil. Add mock dried shrimp (pronounce in Hokkien: Hei Bee Hiam), and fry till fragrant and slightly crisped. Add in mushroom dices, long bean and yam dices with water enough to create sizzling effect, and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add Chinese cabbage, stir fry for 30 seconds.

4) Then, add cooked rice, followed by light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and vegetarian mushroom sauce. Stir-fry vigorously to combine seasoning and rice well. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. If rice appear too dry, add sesame oil (for better fragrance) or just some water (to reduce oil intake). Return pre-fried mock meat to wok, and sprinkle some sugar. Continue to stir-fry for 3 minutes, or until all ingredient and condiments are well combined. Heat off, and serve warm.

A regular portion of my vegetables fried rice counts about 400kcal. Slightly better than usual fried rice, but with fried mock meat and vegetarian dried shrimps added, calories can’t be reduced that much.

Yes, one of my readers, Jennsen, requested more vegetables/ vegetarian recipes, here’s one you go (cheers)!

Tips: Since there isn’t any minced garlic or onion for vegetarian dish, I added mock dried shrimps to make my rice more fragrant and to yield more interesting bites with these crunchy mock dried shrimp. Get bottled vegetarian mock dried shrimp/ chili dried shrimp off the shelves at large supermarkets or vegetarian stores.