Comments on: How Low Can You Go? Chicken-and-Corn Fried Rice with Lemon Spinach

By: Arthi

Arthi — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:27:42 +0000

Seems a delicious recipe!!

I notice it uses comparatively less spices, so I think it would me room to experiment with more spices.

By: Lindsey O.

Lindsey O. — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:54:32 +0000

I just tried this tonight and it was really good. And fairly quick! I forgot that I had to have precooked rice until I began, but no fear! I just had it cooking in the rice cooker while I made the rest and never added it to my wok. It was fine just like that, with the ground meat and corn mixture served on top of the rice and spinach. I didn’t bother to tell anyone I had goofed! :)

By: Shannon

Shannon — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:32:01 +0000

My family loved this recipe. I did make a few additions such as bok choy, peas, and Chinese 5 spice. Overall, quick, easy, and a great use of leftover roasted chicken!

By: katie

katie — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:39:28 +0000

Hey Trent! One great tip for fried rice is to collect all your bits of leftover white rice from meals in a large ziplock bag in the freezer.

Then when you have enough you just move it to the fridge to thaw the night before you cook your fried rice. It is nice and cold and dry and fries beautifully.

Another good way to get rice is to save the extra white rice from chinese take-out meals. You are already paying for take out and a lot of people just throw those away and eat the fried rice. Just pop them in the freezer to add to your rice collection.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:10:52 +0000

In our frat house we used to make a lot of Tuna Pasta. Make sure to get the Tuna tins in olive oil. Nothing beats Tuna pasta, bang-for-the-buck-wise, imho.

By: Moneyblogga

Moneyblogga — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:03:00 +0000

Thanks for this recipe. Gonna try it this week.

By: joan

joan — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:22:35 +0000

Love this series: I look forward to your Saturday posts. This meal looks wonderful; I’m gonna try it this week. I believe I read about making three meals out of one chicken on your blog. This could easily be one of the meals making the cost even lower. The green spinach really sets off the dish making it very eye appealing. Thank You for this dish.

By: ClaireTN

ClaireTN — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:48:21 +0000

That looks great. I love these food posts.

By: HyacinthB

HyacinthB — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 13:20:07 +0000

I understand how you are trying to economize but this dish just looks nasty. You eat with your eyes first and to me this looks like it was already eaten once and is being “recycled”. Throwing a pile of beige “stuff” on a bed of uncooked spinach is not my idea of color on a plate. I would serve the spinach on the side of the plate as a salad very lightly dressed with some basalmic vinegar and oil and add some green onion or tomato to it. Definitely add veggies like carrots (small dice) or celery to the rice to add color. I like the idea of diced chicken rather than ground which is higher in fat. And rather than just piling it on the plate, consider packing it in a small bowl and turning it out onto the plate. Only takes an entra minute to do and helps with portion control. Add a slice of fruit, like orange to garnish. Prettier plate with more flavor and nutrition.

By: Martijn Reintjes

Martijn Reintjes — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 09:42:43 +0000

Hi Trend,
nice articles about making nice but cheap meals! But with all due respect, your photo’s don’t really look appetizing. I know food photography is really, really hard, but with some small brush ups I think they can become much better.
Check out http://kayotickitchen.com/ It’s a foodblog from a Dutch girl that is really good with photography. But she doesn’t only blog about great food, she also published small tutorials about photography which I think you would really like.

Keep up the good work!

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:48:03 +0000

I grew up in a Chinese restaurant and the eggs CAN absorb a great deal of oil. We used to have the wok flaming hot and add the oil, then throw in the eggs and scramble vigorously. It really extended the eggs by a lot, and would easily double the volume of eggs. It was a way to extend the eggs and make it taste a lot better, at the expense of health, just FYI.

Also, I would make a couple more changes. First, I would brown the meat on high heat, kind of like the crust you get on a nice grilled burger/steak.
Ground meat is not necessary as well, as long as it is cut into small pieces. In the restaurant, we would cube boiled chicken for chicken fried rice.

Second, I would cook/heat all the ingredients separately before you add it to the pan. Then stir fry all the ingredients together on high heat in 1 serving batches. In the restaurant, we had the luxury of large woks and enough heat to keep them flaming hot and able to avoid mushy/soggy rice. From the look of the rice from the pictures, it seems to be on the soggy and mushy side.

Yeah, I’m kinda spoiled being having had access to that. But man, college was brutal not being able to make myself a good plate of fried rice, being so far away from home.

By: sammy

sammy — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:27:58 +0000

how about using real garlic–i think a head of garlic is less than a jar of minced. you just need a clove or two from the head for your recipe.

same for the lemon juice–how much can one lemon cost?

in the summer you can get an ear or two of corn for practically nothing. cut the kernels off w/a sharp knife, then scrape the cob w/ your knife to get the corn bits and juices. yummy!

By: J

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:18:18 +0000

If/when you come to the Boston area, Ming Tsai’s restaurant (Blue Ginger) is located in Wellesley, about 30-45 minutes from Fenway and downtown. We’ve been for a few “special occasion” meals over the years and have always left impressed.

By: deb

deb — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:33:46 +0000

I would add more veggies (when I make fried rice I use up all kinds of veggie bits), other than that, it sounds terrific!

By: Steven@HundredGoals.com

Steven@HundredGoals.com — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:26:47 +0000

I have those exact same plates… :)

By: Kelly

Kelly — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:12:01 +0000

thanks! loving this series!

By: Chloe (Naturally Frugal)

Chloe (Naturally Frugal) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:52:28 +0000

That looks great, I would add more veggies in to boost the nutrition but overall it seems like a nice meal!

Stir fry recipes are awesome because you can add in whatever you have in your fridge, reducing waste and cutting cost at the same time. Good post!

By: Dawn

Dawn — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:39:57 +0000

I am a big fan of stir fry recipes to use up left over rice and vegetables. It seems to me that this would be quite flexible and you could add or change veggies and meat depending on what was at hand. I had heard about this recipe on NPR – thanks for sharing your experience with it.

By: RB @ RB30RB40

RB @ RB30RB40 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:37:38 +0000

Wow! Nice one. How low can we go? Try just eating raw vegetables and fruit for a weekenk. You’ll cut out everything bad, absorb the most amount of nutrients, and never have trouble going to the bathroom!! :)

It’s all about the diet. You don’t even need to excercise as I found out in my 180 day experiment I wrote on my blog entitled “Losing Your Way To More Money.” The results were awesome.

Have a great weekend!

Rgds,

By: teri

teri — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:21:24 +0000

for the veggies among us, crumbled extra firm tofu makes a good chicken substitute in stir-fry/fried-rice type recipes.

If you use baby spinach, no need to de-stem. If you use regular spinach, you would need to remove stems, as they’re tough…

sounds good. thanks for sharing.