Vegetable Fried Rice

Love take out but hate take out prices? You can make your own vegetable fried rice at home AND freeze it so you have more for later.

We love vegetable fried rice. We also love sticking to our food budget and take out is not always the most frugal option for us. So we decided to try our hand at making take out ourselves.

How to Make Vegetable Fried Rice

First things first, gather your ingredients:

1 TBS extra virgin olive oil

1 bag of stir fry style vegetables

1 garlic clove

2-3 eggs

3 cups of cooked your choice of rice (we use long grain brown rice)

3 TBS of lite soy sauce

Instant Pot Vegetable Fried Rice

Pull out your Instant Pot and start the saute function. You will want to let your Instant Pot heat for a few minutes.

Once your IP is hot add 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. You can also use any other kind of lightly flavored/flavorless oil. Allow your oil to heat.

You can dip your fingers in water and flick a bit into the oil to test if it is hot enough. If the water sizzles and pops, it’s hot enough. You can also wait and make your best guess but that’s not nearly as exciting.

With your oil properly heated, it’s time to add in your stir fry vegetables. You can use fresh vegetables or the frozen prepackaged stuff from the grocery store. Whichever you prefer.

You can also add in any of your own frozen zucchini, frozen squash, or frozen peppers.

Add in your vegetables and stir with a spatula. Make sure your vegetables are getting coated with the hot oil. I will sometimes add another couple drops of oil if the vegetables are not quite coated.

Allow the vegetables to heat in the oil, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 4 minutes. You want your veggies tender but not mushy. After your 3-4 minutes is up, add in a garlic clove and stir in for another minute or so.

Now use your spatula and push all of the vegetables to one side of the pot. Crack your eggs and drop them on the empty side of the pot. You can add or subtract eggs depending on your taste. We like to use 3.

With your spatula, scramble the eggs on the empty side of the pot. They should cook pretty quickly. Once they are no longer runny, go ahead and mix them with the rest of the veggies.

Now it’s time to add in your precooked rice. If you have already cooked and frozen rice, this is the perfect time to use it. Mix the rice in with the vegetables until everything is thoroughly mixed.

Now add in your soy sauce and continue to stir. After everything is thoroughly mixed and heated through you will want to cut the heat on your Instant Pot.

This recipe will make about five 1 cup servings. If you are trying your hand at meal prep, you can double this recipe and freeze what you don’t eat right away for later.

How to Freeze Vegetable Fried Rice

Freezing vegetable fried rice is really easy and it gives you a super tasty meal that your future self will love.

Allow your vegetable fried rice to cool for a bit. You will need to gather a measuring cup, a sharpie, and a few freezer safe storage bags.

Depending on if you want single servings or if you will reheat for a family meal in the future you can store in either quart size or gallon size freezer bags. Using a measuring cup, scoop out 1 cup servings into your bags.

Single servings will go in a quart bag, larger family servings can go in the gallon bag. You may also want to try using a ½ cup measuring cup. It’s smaller size makes it cleaner and easier to scoop into the storage bags.

After everything has been moved from the pot into the storage bags, press as much air out of the bags as you can and flatten them out. Then stack them onto the shelves in your freezer.

How to thaw and reheat

If you thought freezing was easy, thawing is even easier. For single servings just move a serving from the freezer to your fridge over night. For larger servings you may want to try a day and a half or two days in the fridge.

Once thawed you can then put your veggies in a bowl and microwave for around a minute and a half, time will vary depending on the microwave. You can also skip the thawing process altogether and just go straight to the microwave but it will likely dry out and not be as tasty.

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