Fried rice is such a fantastic rice dish to make. It's quick, you can gather a few leftovers and it can be ready in no time at all. Plus, it can come in different variations. In this seafood fried rice recipe, I use a mix of crab meat, crab roe, shrimp, and squid as the choice of seafood to make a lip-smacking dish. Fried rice is so great because you can either eat it on its own or you can add a sauce. Whether that is a simple vegetable stir fry sauce or something more laden, like in this chicken cashew stir fry, the choice is entirely yours.
Other fantastic rice recipes to try are this fried rice with pork and biltong, turmeric rice, waakye, pink rice or this brown rice porridge.
Ingredients
For this seafood fried rice recipe some shrimp, crab meat, squid, peas, spring onions, carrots, green bell pepper, eggs, soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, green chili pepper, and garlic are used. Leftover rice is always the standard for getting the best fried rice. However, if you have no leftover rice, you can quickly boil some rice, spread that out, and leave it to cool before you make this seafood fried rice.
Instructions
The first step is to get all the ingredients prepped and ready to go. The squid is cut into strips, tenderized just like in this chicken cashew stir-fry , seasoned, and then fried. The shrimp and the eggs are also seasoned and fried.
The crab meat is obtained from fresh crabs by steaming the crab and then taking apart and extracting the flesh. This can be quite intricate and fussy to get the meat out of the shell but it is well worth it.
In this recipe, I also add the roe, which is the egg from the matured female crab. This is however optional as most people will buy canned crab meat and the roe is not something that is typically used or sold.
The spring onions, garlic, carrots, and bell peppers are also chopped. The rest of the process goes pretty quickly: fry the garlic, the white ends of the spring onions, and the cut chillis in the hot wok, and then add the carrots, peas, the crab meat, and roe as well as the squid and the eggs.
Add some soy sauce to the contents of the wok and then add the rice and mix. The bell peppers, shrimp, and the green ends of the spring onions go in last with the addition of oyster sauce and sesame oil and that is basically it.
Substitutions
- Octopus or cuttlefish - if you don't have squid you can easily substitute, that with some octopus or cuttlefish. Just make sure that they are tender before you add them to the rice.
Variations
- Ginger - a hint of ginger in this seafood fried rice takes this dish to a whole other level.
- Cabbage - every now and again, I like to add thinly shredded white cabage to my fried rice. I usually leave it to the end so that the cabbage slices still have a bit if crunch to them.
Seafood Fried Rice
Ingredients
- 300 grams squid cut into thin strips
- 12 large shrimp deveined and cleaned
- 1 tablespoon crab meat heaped
- ½ tablespoon crab roe optional
- 3 cloves garlic chopped
- small bunch spring onions chopped with the white parts separated from the green.
- 1 large carrot chopped
- 2 small green peppers chopped
- 3 tablespoons peas approximately
- 4 medium eggs whisked
- cooked leftover rice approximately 400 grams of uncooked rice
- soy sauce to taste
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil approximately
- oyster sauce to taste
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
Instructions
- Add baking powder and a few tablespoons of water to the squid to tenderise it. Wash off the baking powder and water mixture after about 10 minutes.
- Season the squid, and the shrimp with soy sauce and some ginger.
- In a hot wok or pan add some vegetable oil and then fry the squid and shrimp for about 3 minutes each separately and set aside.
- Add some salt to taste to the eggs, fry in the wok, and set aside. If they are not cooked through, this is not a problem. They will cook through when added later on.
- Over high heat, fry garlic, white ends of the spring onions, and the green chilis.
- Add carrots, peas, crab meat, and crab roe.
- Add squid, eggs, and some soy sauce and mix well.
- Add rice, mix the contents of the wok and then add oyster sauce and more of the soy sauce. Taste to see if you need more soy sauce.
- Add shrimp, green bell peppers, and some sesame oiland mix again.
- Add green bits from the spring onions, stir in and turn off heat.
- Serve hot.
Video
Notes
- Crab roe is optional and is not typically used in fried rice. In this recipe, I used crab meat from fresh crab however and it would have been a shame if that had gone to waste.
- Getting crab meat out of fresh crabs can be quite a chore. You need to be careful not to get any shells into the meat. A lot of effort with minimal result but worth it.
Annie says
Just delicious!