Acorn-Fed Pork Fried Rice

One of my new favorite weeknight meals is fried rice. It’s quick, easy, delicious, and you can make it with whatever combination of ingredients you have in your fridge and freezer – my kind of meal! It’s great to do fried rice in the winter because it’s warm and hearty on a cold night plus it heats up your kitchen pretty quick. But, it’s also great to do in the summer because you can use so many in season vegetables, so we end up making it all year round. We recently bought a wok to step-up our stir fry game, but it is certainly not required. Neither is a pressure cooker, but if you cook rice frequently, I highly recommend it. You can’t beat fully cooked brown rice in 7 minutes.

Our fried rice typically starts with cooking brown rice, but you can certainly use white rice if you prefer. While the rice is cooking, we cook up the veggies going in our fried rice. Because we try to use local veggies from the awesome farms around us or from our own garden, we end up freezing lots of carrots and peas to use all year round. We also almost always add onion and garlic as well as an egg because we always have great eggs on hand. But I really encourage you to have fun with what else you add to the mix. Bell peppers, bok choy, cabbage, bean sprouts are great to add some crunch. Jalapeños or Thai peppers can add some heat. And of course we recommend adding acorn-fed pork! Cut up strips of Boston butt, picnic shoulder or boneless chops all work quite well or ground pork is another easy option. Quantity wise I use what I have to make about the same number of cups of veggies to cups of rice and then add about a pound of pork. If you want specific amounts and cooking directions, here’s a great recipe to check out the basics of fried rice cooking. I hope you give it a try. Enjoy!

Acorn-fed Pork Wok