13 Fried Rice Recipes to Turn Leftovers Into an Easy, Flavorful Dinner Tonight

Grab a wok or a skillet and use up your leftover rice—deliciously— in these recipes for nasi goreng, shrimp fried rice, and more.

By
Mimi Young
Mimi Young
Mimi Young
Editor
Mimi Young is an editor and pastry chef. She has also curated and written numerous recipe roundups for Serious Eats.
Learn about Serious Eats' Editorial Process
Published December 03, 2024
shrimp fried rice in a small blue and white bowl
Serious Eats / Tim Chin

As much as I love bread—baking and eating it—rice is in my soul. I'm not ashamed to say I have no problems plowing through a 25-pound bag by myself. It's a surprise to no one that there is almost always leftover cooked rice in my fridge. Often I'll just freshen it with a quick steam for a salmon rice bowl or bibimbap. Other times, I'll whip up fried rice with whatever I want to use up—roast duck, barbecue pork, or bits and bobs from the produce bin.

Making good flavorful fried rice is as much about technique as it is about ingredients. Leftover rice is ideal, but so long as your rice is sufficiently chilled, the freshly cooked variety works just as well. There are also ways to compensate for the lack of high B.T.U.s in home kitchens—such as using a kitchen torch to achieve the smoky aroma and flavor of classic wok hei and cooking the rice in smaller batches to prevent clumping. Whether you're craving restaurant-style shrimp fried rice, omelette-topped Japanese omurice, or flavor-packed nasi goreng, we have recipes to turn cooked rice—leftover or fresh—into crave-worthy comfort food you can eat morning, noon, or night.

  • Easy Fried Rice

    Vegetable fried rice inside a green ceramic bowl.

    Serious Eats / Eric Kleinberg

    Whether you're using leftover or freshly cooked rice, this foolproof recipe yields vegetable-studded fried rice with individual grains that barely hold together when picked up with chopsticks or a spoon—it's so good you won't want to put either down.

  • Perfect Egg Fried Rice

    A bowl of egg fried rice seen from above

    Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

    Sometimes all you have are eggs and leftover rice, and maybe a scallion or two in your fridge. Kenji shows you three ways to make the most out of these simple ingredients, so whether you're cooking on a gas stove, electric range, or outdoor burner, you can make perfect egg fried rice every time.

  • Shrimp Fried Rice

    Shrimp fried rice in a small blue and white patterned bowl
    Serious Eats / Tim Chin

    The key to making great shrimp fried rice at home is all about doing more with less. This means leaving out the soy sauce, sesame oil, and oyster sauce in favor of a little chicken broth powder. Here, we use a kitchen blowtorch to recreate the smoky aroma of classic wok hei.

  • Fried Rice With Chinese Sausage, Cabbage, and Torch Hei

    A bowl of fried rice with Chinese sausage and cabbage

    Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

    Chinese sausage is one of those staples I almost always keep in my fridge, along with a bag of frozen peas, so this is the perfect fried rice to make—especially when I'm out of eggs. Cabbage adds a nice crunch but if you don't have it on hand, you can substitute with whatever hearty greens you happen to have. We apply the same "torch hei" technique used in the shrimp fried rice recipe above to impart the signature smoky aroma of high-flame stir fry.

    Continue to 5 of 13 below

  • Thai-Style Crab Fried Rice

    Thai-Style Fried Crab Fried Rice plated with sliced cucumbers and lime

    Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

    Thai khao phat buu—fried rice with crab—is one of the very best ways to spotlight sweet, flaky crab meat. This dish features fragrant jasmine rice lightly seasoned with fish sauce, garlic, and chiles, then tossed with scrambled egg, picked crabmeat, and scallions.

  • Nasi Goreng (Indonesian Fried Rice)

    A plate of rice topped with a fried egg on a plate, garnished with cucumber and tomato slices, and showered with fried shallots. There is another plate to the right periphery of the image, as well as several glasses of liquid in the shot.

    Serious Eats / Qi Ai

    This is Indonesia's flavor-packed take on fried rice—redolent with kecap manis, the country's ubiquitous sweet soy sauce, and terasi (Indonesian shrimp paste) which adds a potent dose of umami and gives the fried rice its distinct flavor. A fried egg, sliced tomato, and sliced cucumber complete the dish.

  • Kimchi and Spam Fried Rice

    Kimchi and spam fried rice topped with fried egg and drizzle with hot sauce

    Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

    The winning combination of pungent, spicy, acidic kimchi and salty, fatty Spam is what transforms leftover rice into what Kenji declares the ultimate Korean-American late-night drunk food. Topped with a runny fried egg, it's comfort food you can eat any time of day.

  • Japanese Pork Fried Rice Omelette With Okonomiyaki Sauce (Omurice)

    Omurice on a blue plate with a spoon

    Serious Eats / Qi Ai

    Anyone who has seen viral videos of soft, runny omelette luxuriously cascading over a mound of seasoned Japanese fried rice can't help but be mesmerized by it. With Daniel's version, you don't need to be an omelette expert to make this simple pork fried rice topped with egg and okonomiyaki sauce. Not rolling the eggs into a true omelette shape makes it far easier to drape them over the rice, as the dish is traditionally served. If pork isn't your thing, try his chicken omurice.

    Continue to 9 of 13 below

  • Nigerian Fried Rice

    Finished Nigerian fried rice on a serving platter

    Serious Eats / Maureen Celestine

    The light yellow-hued rice dish strewn with vegetables looks, feels, and eats like a dish that’s a cross between Indian pilau and Chinese fried rice. Using converted rice ensures that the grains stay separate. The fluffy rice is first par-cooked in stock to infuse it with savoriness, then cooked a second time to combine it with vegetables.

  • Fodni Bhaat (Indian Fried Rice)

    A copper bowl of fodni bhaat on a blue and yellow stripped linen

    Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

    Fodni bhaat is a popular Indian leftover rice dish that's often eaten for breakfast. Garlic gives the dish a nice flavor and bite, while the green chile imparts subtle heat.

  • Fried Rice With Blistered Green Beans and Basil

    Fried Rice With Blistered Green Beans and Basil, sliced cucumber, and lime on a patterned square plate

    Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

    Charred, blistered green beans are an excellent accompaniment to rice, and here the beans make up over 50% of the weight of the final dish. To flavor it, Kenji uses garlic, scallions, Thai chiles, and a whole lot of fresh Thai basil.

  • Garlic Fried Rice

    Garlic fried rice served with chicken adobo

    Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

    This Filipino-style garlic rice pairs beautifully with any super-savory, super-saucy main dish, especially chicken adobo. Here, we take the extra step of straining out the fried garlic bits before frying the rice in the garlic-infused oil to prevent the garlic from burning, which can give the rice an unpleasantly bitter taste.

    Continue to 13 of 13 below

  • Crispy Kimchi Cheese Rice

    Spoon holding a portion of crispy kimchi cheese rice from a cast iron skillet

    Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

    Though technically not a "fried rice" in the traditional sense, crispy kimchi cheese rice has the same easy-to-make, easy-to-eat vibes of fried rice. Leftover rice is seasoned thoroughly with flavorful gochujang, soy sauce, and rice vinegar before being layered with kimchi and cheese, and crisped up in a skillet.

June 2024

More Serious Eats Recipes