Orange Beef and Fried Rice

Tonights dinner started this morning before I left for work. It felt good to come home and be half way done with dinner. It was so easy. You can do this even if your not an experienced chef/cook. Just make sure you have a skillet, a wooden spoon, a slow cooker and the ingredients. That simple, that easy. The best thing about this dinner is most of the ingredients can be kept in the freezer and pulled out when ready to use it. you can even freeze your leftover rice in a ziploc bag for later use if you don't want to use it right away. This is great for those "gotta get dinner quick" nights. In the time it would take to order takeout and have it delivered you could have this done. Easy. Peasy :)

Orange Beef
Ingredients:
1 flank/skirt steak semi-frozen cut in to 4 strips across the grain
1 1/2 cup of Panda Express Orange chicken sauce

Directions:
Add ingredients to the slow cooker on low 6-8 hours. Then shred with forks. Should be fork tender. Then add back into the orange sauce. keep warm til ready to serve.

Fried Rice
Ingredients:
2-3 cups leftover white or brown pre cooked rice
1 bag frozen mixed veggies (mine had corn, peas, carrots, and green beans)
1/4 cup frozen green bell peppers
1/2 cup frozen diced onions
2 eggs
1/4 cup fresh bacon bits
sesame oil
soy sauce
oyster sauce

Directions:
Open frozen veggie bags, measure out the bell peppers, and onions. set aside. In a small bowl whisk the eggs (just like for scrambled eggs) set aside. If using raw bacon for bacon bits, brown the bacon in the bottom of the skillet, once the bacon is cooked, remove cool and crush bacon. In the hot bacon grease with the skillet still on scramble the eggs. remove from pan and set aside. In the same pan add all the frozen veggies with about 2 tbsp sesame oil. toss to coat and cook. about 3-4 min (the onions will start turning translucent). Remember you want crisp veggies so don't over cook.  Once the veggies are cooked if any residual liquid is in the pan, remove with paper towel. Then add the rice, eggs and bacon to the veggie mixture. gently toss. drizzle in about 2 tbsp sesame oil, soy sauce and 1 -2 tsp of oyster sauce and toss to coat. Keep tossing until the rice and eggs are heated through then serve approx 1-3 minutes. (depending on pan). All of this is done in a HOT pan. I used my WOK. you can use that too but a 10' skillet is perfect too.

This rice is SO yummy! My family just loved it with the orange beef. It was a fun "chinese eat in" night instead of takeout/delivery. All were fed before they had to rush off to their many activities tonight. They all ate all of the veggies and that is an accomplishment! I hope you enjoy this as much as we did. :)

Homemade Fried Rice with Mixed Vegetables

I made orange chicken in my slow cooker tonight. I wanted it to feel like real chinese food... so I made some fried rice. I had never made it before, so like always I searched the web for basic recipes. I found several and read comments on changes other's had made, and then felt confident enough to to make my own. I think this is pretty much my favorite fried rice. It is so tasty, and low sodium as I didn't add any salt to this recipe except for when making the scrambled eggs. I think it also helped that I had plenty of sauce for my orange chicken if I needed any extra flavor. My kids don't usually eat fried rice from the chinese places, even though they order it. Tonight they ate it all up and went back for seconds. They said that it was better because it had corn and green beans in it. I think they are pulling my legs. It's just so good... I hope you like it just as much as I do.

Ingredients

1 bag thawed, mixed vegetables (the one with corn, peas, carrots, and green beans)
3 eggs
salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp olive oil (or vegetable oil)
1 cup white onion (I had some frozen diced) green onions would be fine too
2 tsp or so of oyster sauce (drizzled on top then tossed for a light coating)
3 Tbsp sesame oil
3-4 cups of cooked rice

Directions:

Scramble in a bowl the eggs, with the salt and pepper. In a Wok or large skillet, heat on high and add the olive oil or vegetable oil. Once the oil is hot, scrabble the eggs in the oil, remove and set aside. Wipe out the wok and add in the sesame oil let it get hot. Toss in the rice and stir to evenly spread the oil over the rice. Once the rice has been coated and "fried" with the oil, add in the egg, mixed vegetables and onion. Stirring to incorporate all ingredients. Still over high heat. Then drizzle in the oyster sauce once the vegetables are cook/heated. Evenly distribute by stirring in the oyster sauce to coat the ingredients. Drizzle again with sesame oil for added flavor, toss again. Remove from heat and serve warm.

Verdict...

We all loved it! This is so tasty and looks just like restaurant fried rice. This is an easy dish to prepare. I used my rice cooker to prepare the rice for this dish. It was perfectly cooked. So delicious. If you like take-out chinese. then this is for you. You can add just about anything you like to this dish, shrimp, ham, leftover chicken or beef. Just more vegetables, such as sprouts and cabbage.