Ingredients: rice, water, egg, oil, shrimp · 40 min cook time · 412kcal · ~₩11,250
Ingredients
170g rice, 184g water, 1.5개 egg, 7.4mL oil, 170g shrimp, 170g chicken breast, 1개 tomato, 0.5개 onion, 0.25컵 peas, 3tbsp ketchup, 2tbsp sugar, 1tbsp vinegar, 1tsp salt, 6oz chicken broth, 1tbsp cornstarch, 2tbsp water
Instructions
1. Wash the rice 3 times, making sure to pour out the starchy water and using fresh water each time. Add 13 oz of water to the 2 cups (12 oz) of washed rice in the rice cooker pot. Cook the rice.
2. Separate the yolks and the egg whites. We'll carefully separate the yolks and the whites by pouring the yolk from one half of the shell to the other, letting the whites fall into a bowl before pouring our yolks into a separate bowl.
3. Cut the tomato. First, we'll cut the tomato into fourths and trim off the hard parts of the core. Then we'll carefully cut out the meat of the tomato. No need to be too precise in this step, as long as you get most of it separated. We'll then roughly dice up the tomato insides, making sure to keep all of the juicy bits. For the outside parts, we'll cut them in two different ways to give some variety in the texture of the dish. For the first two parts, we'll cut into short strips. For the other two, we'll first cut them into strips lengthwise, then rotate 90 degrees to dice.
4. With the onion, we'll dice a small part of it. Then we'll cut some into bigger slices.
5. Cut the shrimp in half by turning our knife horizontally. Before Kat and I got married, we found a therapist in San Francisco to help us navigate some big issues. It definitely was not easy, but our relationship really transformed through the process. This is why I'm a huge proponent of therapy, and why I think BetterHelp is amazing. It's an online service that assesses your needs and matches you with your own licensed professional therapist that you can start talking to within 48 hours. It's not a crisis line, it's not self-help, it's professional therapy that's done securely online. Just log in, send a message to your therapist at any time, and expect timely and thoughtful responses or schedule weekly video or phone sessions.
6. Move on to the chicken. We'll also turn our knife horizontally to slice our pieces in half. Then we'll slice the pieces into short strips. Now with our chicken cut, we'll add 1/2 a tsp of salt, 1 tbsp of cornstarch, and 2 tbsp of water to marinate it. This chicken will cook up to be very tender.
7. Let's see how my dad creates the iconic red sauce which covers half of this dish. We'll first add 3 tbsp of ketchup. We'll follow that with 2 tbsp of sugar, 1 tbsp of vinegar, and 1 tsp of salt. I'm also adding about 6 oz of chicken broth. This has to be the perfect balance of sweet and tart. If you prefer it sweeter or more tart, you can adjust it. We'll taste test our sauce and adjust here if needed.
8. With our sauce done, we'll need a piece of aluminum foil. We'll fold it in half lengthwise, then bend it into an S shape that will fit your serving plate. We'll use this later to create the iconic yin yang symbol with our sauces, so set it aside for now.
9. Next up is my dad's special approach to making fried rice. Mix the egg yolk into the rice first, before you start frying. Usually we'd fry the rice first. When you cook it, the effect is that every grain of rice will be yellow. We'll turn on the stove to the highest heat. We'll heat the wok on high for about a minute before adding our oil. About a tbsp of oil for frying the rice. Then we'll add the rice. There's not much to do after mixing the yolk in, just take your time frying it. If you move fast here, you can mix the egg yolk and the rice more thoroughly. Fried rice tastes best when you cook on high heat. Hear that crackling? That's called wok hei! After about 3 minutes of frying the rice on high, we'll add our salt. We're adding 1/2 a tsp of salt. Gorgeous! All right, the rice is fried. Turn off the stove. We'll take the rice and scoop it all over here. After another 30-40 seconds of cooking, we'll plate the rice. Finally, we'll take the rice, and make it flat. Gently pat it level. Then, we'll put this on. There'll be one red side, one white side. With our rice done, we're ready to move on to stir-frying.
10. Let's start cooking! We're going to start with the red side. We're going to cook the chicken first. Now, we'll reheat the wok for another 30 seconds before adding our oil. 1 tbsp of oil. First, the chicken. Stir-fry it. After cooking the chicken for 30-40 seconds, we'll add our bigger pieces of onion. All right, push it to the side. We still have some oil, so we don't have to remove it. Stir-fry the onions on the side. Then we'll follow with all of our tomato. Put the tomatoes in. The diced ones first. Notice how my dad squeezes the juice out of some of the smaller pieces. Okay, now we'll add the strips. We want to cook the juice out from the tomato pieces. Mix it well. After another 40-50 seconds of stir-frying, we'll add the red sauce we created earlier. Our tomato sauce. Once the red sauce boils or about 20 seconds, we'll lower the heat. Give it a taste. See if it's tart enough. I want to add a bit of sugar. 1 tbsp. Now, we'll thicken the sauce. To thicken our sauce, we'll create a slurry with 1 tbsp of cornstarch and 2 tbsp of water. We'll premix the slurry in a bowl first, then pour it into our sauce, while stirring constantly to prevent clumping. Keep the heat low. Everything is already cooked through. Turn the heat up to cook it. My dad turns the heat back up to high for about 10-15 seconds, so the sauce can boil off a bit more water to achieve the thick consistency that he wants. It's ready, so we can turn off the heat. Put it aside.
11. Now that we're done with the red side, let's see how my dad tackles the white side of the dish. My dad is saving time just by using a new wok and spatula here, but you can also wash and dry your wok and spatula so that it's clean for this step. Save ourselves some cleaning. Heat on. Like before, we'll heat the wok on high for about 1 minute, then add 2 tbsp of oil. Put the shrimp in. Keep the heat low. After cooking the shrimp for about 20 seconds, we'll add our minced onion. Put them all in. Stir-fry them. After another 20 seconds, we'll add the rest of the can of chicken broth or about 8 oz. 1 tsp of salt. This chicken broth isn't that salty. All right, we're making the slurry now. We'll also make the same slurry again with 1 tbsp of cornstarch and 2 tbsp of water. We'll mix that together like earlier. Beat the egg whites. Put some muscle into it. Time to thicken it. We'll pour in the slurry while stirring, just like before. Don't let the heat get too high, keep it low. Since this sauce has a bit more broth, my dad adds a bit more slurry, mixing 1 tbsp of cornstarch with 1 tbsp of water. That looks good. Pour in the egg whites. Pour them in slowly. Don't stir immediately when you put in the egg whites. If you stir it right away, they'll break apart. That looks great. Turn the stove off. Once the egg whites have cooked for 20-30 seconds, we'll add a tsp of oil to add some shine and some peas for color. We're basically done cooking now. Next, we'll scoop everything onto this plate. So is it usually an egg side and a tomato side? Or what are the different combinations? You can do it whatever way you want. Just make the dish two different colors. But people sometimes use beef, or sometimes use pork. Someone else asked, "I've seen most recipes not use soy sauce or any other kind of seasoning other than salt. Is that true?" I didn't use soy sauce. Soy sauce would change the color. That makes sense, because you want it to be bright. You probably don't want to use beef, because it'd make it darker, right? Yes. It's best to use chicken. Okay, chef! You're so smart! Now, we're putting on the red side. Be careful to not get any sauce on the wrong side of the plate, because the presentation of this dish is so important. Wow! Now let's hear more from my mom about the popularity of this dish. People right now have kind of forgotten about this dish. I can't count how much of the audience in the comments mentioned this dish. They want to make this dish. I told Daddy, and Daddy said, "Okay, let's do it." Probably because it's getting forgotten about. But restaurant menus still have this dish. If a restaurant patron requests this dish, the restaurant will make it for you. This is a very traditional Cantonese dish. Many comments requested that I make this. We've fulfilled many of our friends' wishes. I hope you all enjoy! Cheers! Hong Doy, have some Yin Yang Fried Rice! Uh-oh! Yin Yang Fried Rice!