What is yakimeshi?
Yaki means fried, and meshi means cooked rice or a meal. In Japan you find fried rice under two names. Chahan comes from the Chinese chǎofàn and appears on the menus of Chinese-style restaurants and ramen shops. Yakimeshi is the Japanese word, and you also read it in teppanyaki restaurants, where the cooks fry the rice with butter on the hot steel plate. In everyday use, both names mean the same dish. A version with ham and plenty of egg is under chahan.
The right rice
Japanese short-grain rice gives yakimeshi its typical, slightly sticky bite. With jasmine rice, the grains are looser. Basmati brings its own perfume, which suits soy sauce less. The 250 g on the recipe card is the raw weight, and cooked the rice weighs about 600 g. The instructions for cooking it in a pot are under cooking rice.
Day-old rice or freshly cooked?
Freshly cooked rice is moist and soft. In the pan the grains clump together and cook in their own steam. Overnight in the refrigerator the rice loses moisture, the starch firms up, and the grains separate when frying. If you have no day-old rice, spread freshly cooked rice on a tray, let it cool uncovered for 30 minutes and then put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Cool cooked rice within two hours and use it the next day. Rice can contain spores of Bacillus cereus, which form toxins at room temperature.
How to get good fried rice
- Break up clumps: Rub the cold rice with damp hands before frying until the grains lie separately.
- Heat: Preheat the wok or pan until the oil shimmers. On medium heat the rice steams and turns soft.
- Amount: Fry no more than two servings at once. In a full pan, the temperature drops.
- Egg: Let the egg set halfway before you add the rice. It then wraps around the grains in flakes.
- Soy sauce: Pour it along the hot edge of the pan instead of onto the rice. There it sizzles briefly, toasts and spreads more evenly.
Variations
For yakimeshi with shrimp, fry 150 g of peeled shrimp beforehand for 2 minutes, take them out and return them at the end. Cut chicken into small cubes and fry it first in the same way. For a teppanyaki style, replace the vegetable oil with 1 tbsp butter and fry 2 chopped garlic cloves with it. For Korean heat, add kimchi to the rice, and the recipe is called kimchi bokkeumbap. The Chinese relative with ham and shrimp is Yangzhou fried rice. For omurice, season the fried rice with ketchup and wrap it in a thin omelette.
What goes with it
As a quick meal, yakimeshi is enough on its own. With a bowl of miso soup and a few gyoza, you cover a Japanese dinner table. Pickled ginger or radish adds acidity against the rich rice.
