This Cheesy Corn Pepper Fried Rice is made with the most easily available ingredients that are most probably already in your fridge, comes together in just 10 minutes and is healthier and way yummier than takeout. Oh! And it has cheese.
This Cheesy Corn Pepper Fried Rice is a very convenient and versatile recipe. It makes the perfect late night supper, a quick and amazing Sunday brunch, ideal for packing for a picnic or a go to lunch and is loved by everyone. It makes for a great tiffin box option for kids. Made with some seasonal corn and sweet bell peppers, I absolutely love how colourful and delicious this fried rice is.
This recipe is highly adaptable and can be customised according to one’s personal preferences. You can add sauces, seasonal vegetables and proteins of your choice or even increase the heat adding some red chilli powder or cayenne pepper to whip up a personal masterpiece.
The best thing about this recipe is that it is full proof and hence, you can never go wrong with it. Being a stir fry, it can prove to be a boon to those who do not cook very often. Eat it as is, throw in a dash of your favourite sauces, accompany it with your favourite Indo-Chinese dishes or Thai Curries or pack it for a picnic, your call! It’s an adaptable and versatile dish that will make you fall in love with it. So, what are you waiting for?
Cooking the Perfect Fried Rice
In this recipe, I have used joha rice, which is a flavourful small grained rice found in Assam, India. It is starchy and has a beautiful fragrant. You can use jasmine rice too. The quality of rice can really affect your recipe. Basically any small grain rice available near you should do the trick. Broken basmati is a great choice!
For small grained rice: wash it thoroughly under running water till the water is clear. Once thoroughly washed, add it to a pan, instant pot or a pressure cooker. For 1 cup rice, use 1.5 cups of water to cook it. And once cooked, keep the rice covered for 10-15 minutes after turning off the gas. Keep the rice in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours before using or overnight, and use it the next day for the best results.
Why this fried rice?
- Quick and health
- Simple yet extremely flavourful
- Kid-friendly
- Super easy to pull off
- Highly adaptable and can be customised as per your needs.
- Lunch-box friendly
- Home-cooked and wholesome
- Takes 10 minutes to make.
- Prepared with minimal ingredients easily available in your pantry
Ingredients in This Cheesy Corn Pepper Fried Rice
While this is a very simple and quick recipe that requires the most basic ingredients, a couple of ingredients make it special. Let’s take a look at those:
- Corn
Corn is a very healthy vegetable which is high in fibre content and hence helps improve digestion. In this recipe, corn provides that bright yellow colour and a slight crunch in every bite. Along with all the other flavours, the butter and the pepper in the recipe complement the flavour of the corn the most and it is just as good as it gets.
- Bell Peppers
From green to red bell peppers, as the colour changes, the bitterness decreases and the sweetness increases. In this recipe I have used red bell peppers that have the fruitiest and sweetest flavour. They add natural sweetness, a pop of red colour as well as a slight crunch to every bite of this righteous fried rice recipe.
- Cheese
Cheese makes the world a better place. It can be eaten as is, paired with wine, melted into a dip or in the case of this recipe, grated on to a hot plate of fried rice over which is slowly melts and elevates this dish by folds. Also, there’s no such thing as too much cheese so go crazy with the cheese or skip it if you like.
Here’s the recipe:
Preparation time – 15 minutes
Cook time – 10 minutes
Serves – 3
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 cup finely chopped onion
- 1 tbsp finely chopped garlic
- 1 cup boiled corn
- 1 red bell pepper – thinly sliced
- 1 tsp black pepper powder
- Salt to taste
- 1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
- 2 tbsp tomato ketchup
- 3 cups cooked rice
- A handful of spring onion greens
- Lots of grated cheese
Directions
- In a wok or a deep pan, heat the oil and add butter to it.
- Once the butter melts, add in the chopped onions.
- Sauté the onions on high flame till they turn translucent.
- At this point add in the finely chopped garlic and sauté till the garlic start turning brown.
- Add in the boiled corn followed by the sliced red bell peppers and sauté it for a few minutes.
- See to it that the vegetables don’t become soggy and retain their crunch.
- Once the vegetables are done, season with some black pepper and salt and mix well.
- Add in your condiments at this point – sweet chilli sauce and tomato ketchup and mix well.
- Add in the cold cooked rice and mix well to combine everything. Do not break the rice.
- Stir fry for a few seconds they take it off the heat and add the spring onion greens.
- Top it up with grated cheese and serve it hot as is or with a side of Indo-Chinese or Thai curry.
Tips to get your fried rice perfect every time!
However, fried rice is a rather simple dish to make; there are certain things that need to be kept in mind. The best fried rice is the one where the vegetables are crunchy yet cooked and the rice grains are fluffy, separated and fragrant, packed with flavour and cooked to perfection. Sometimes in order to avoid a lumpy, soggy plate of fried rice, we undercook our rice, which results into half cooked rice and trust me, no one likes a bite in their rice. Here are some tips to get the perfect fried rice every single time.
- Always use a deep dish for cooking, preferably a Wok or a deep pan. This promotes fast and uniform cooking.
- Always start cooking once the oil is smoking hot and cook on high flame throughout.
- Make sure you chop/ slice your ingredients finely to help them cook fast.
- Always use cold rice. This point cannot be stressed enough. If the rice is not cold, it sticks to the pan and makes the fried rice lumpy. It is best to use leftover day-old rice.
- Always garnish after turning the stove off to retain the freshness of the garnish.
Go make this dish for your next meal and trust me, you’re going to make it again and again because it’s unbelievable how something so simple can turn out to be so dreamy. It is one of quick comfort meals and I love it. I hope you will love it just as much!
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