A simple, quick and easy recipe for mushroom fried rice. This recipe works with any fresh mushroom, from buttons to morels, and whatever vegetable is in season when you make it.

Pretty much everyone has eaten fried rice, but not everyone knows its place in Asian cooking: Generally speaking, fried rice is a comfort food, leftover user dish that you make when you are in a hurry or just don’t feel like something elaborate.

So a mushroom fried rice would be something you’d make when you had lots of mushrooms around — or, conversely, when you wanted to use some dried mushrooms from the pantry.

I vastly prefer to make mushroom fried rice with fresh mushrooms of any sort, but you can make it with dried mushrooms — just rehydrate them for 30 minutes before you begin.

Extra Mile Option. Rehydrate the mushrooms, strain the water they soaked in, then use that to cook the rice. Not traditional, but good.

I used morels in this recipe, because we had a banner morel year, so why not? But plain ole’ button mushrooms are OK, too, although most supermarkets sell shiitakes, and they are the kings of supermarket mushrooms in my book. But like I said, any edible mushroom is fine.

The Rice

Rice in any fried rice recipe needs to be long grain and it needs to be pre-cooked and cold. Making fried rice with freshly cooked rice won’t work — it gets all gunky.

Mostly you will be using leftover rice from a previous dish for your mushroom fried rice, but if rice is not in your regular rotation, you can make it up to a few days before and leave it in the fridge.

In a pinch, you can make your rice a couple hours before, and lay the finished rice out on a baking sheet in a thin layer to dry. Stir it around with to separate the grains as it does.

Vegetables and Variations

My mushroom fried rice has morels and asparagus because they are a perfect match. But the spirit of fried rice is to use what’s around, so you could pair chanterelles with summer squash or peppers, or porcini and carrots, or hell, just go with the standard mix of peas and carrots from the freezer section.

Beyond that, I use the “holy trinity” of Chinese cuisine — garlic, ginger and chiles — as well as green onions and cilantro.

I also like to do the scrambled egg thing in my mushroom fried rice, for added protein.

Other Fried Rice Recipes

Other than mushroom fried rice, you will find a host of other fried rice recipes here on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook:

• Crab fried rice with pineapple. This is a Thai style fried rice.
• Duck fried rice, done Chinese style.
• I also make my Cajun dirty rice in the style of Asian fried rice, if you want to go that route.

Once made, mushroom fried rice will keep a couple days in the fridge. Reheat it over low heat in a pan with a lid. It usually takes 10 minutes or so.

If you liked this recipe, please leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating and a comment below; I’d love to hear how everything went. If you’re on Instagram, share a picture and tag me at huntgathercook.