As with every recipe for fried rice, start with cold (or at least room temperature) cooked rice. It doesn’t work with rice hot out of the cooker, which becomes heavy and stodgy when stir-fried.

It’s essential that the rice is chilled, because if it’s freshly cooked and hot, it will clump up in the pan, rather than separating into individual grains. This recipe can be varied in so ...

This is a basic recipe, but feel free to change things up. Use any leftover meat or vegetables that you have in your fridge. Here's what I used to make the savory shrimp fried rice recipe.