Vegan egg fried rice

This week I want to share my take on an all-time Chinese takeaway favourite of mine – Egg fried rice. I’ve been told in the past that as far as Chinese cuisine goes, this dish isn’t very authentic and highly “European-ised”, but it is certainly known as a popular Chinese dish in Austria and it used to be one of my go-to Chinese meals before I went vegan. When I first tried to make a vegan version of this dish I used a mixture of chickpea flour, water and spices for the egg, which turned out okay, but didn’t quite have the right consistency, so I added crumbled up tofu for a more “egg-like” texture.

One of the key ingredients in this dish is Kala namak, also known as Indian black salt, which contains sulfur, making it smell and taste slightly eggy. It is therefore great for dishes like this, where you are trying to resemble the taste of eggs as closely as you can without using the real thing.

However, if you can’t get hold of Kala Namak you can use regular salt and it will turn out just as delicious.

I hope you enjoy. 

Recipe

Ingredients 200g dried rice 300g mixed vegetables (I used peas, carrots, mushrooms, leeks and cabbage) Sauté sauce: 2 tbsp soy sauce 1 tbsp sweet chili sauce 1 tbsp sesame oil 1 tbsp lemon juice 1 tsp tahini 2 cloves of garlic minced ¼ tsp salt Vegan fried egg: 100g firm tofu 30g chickpea flour 1 tsp nutritional yeast ¼ tsp Indian black salt (or normal salt) black pepper to taste pinch of nutmeg ¼ tsp mustard 1 tsp oil 50 ml water

Vegan egg fried rice servings: 2-3 Method Boil the rice according to package instructions and chop your vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Then prepare a sauté sauce by mixing the soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, sesame oil, lemon juice, tahini, minced garlic and salt together and set aside. For the vegan “egg” mix the chickpea flour, nutritional yeast, black salt, pepper, nutmeg, mustard, oil and water until smooth, then crumble the tofu into the bowl and stir until it is well coated. Heat up a non-stick frying pan and cook the “egg” mixture on medium heat. Stir continuously to make sure the mixture doesn’t stick together and form one big lump. Once the egg mixture has firmed up, remove it from the pan and set it aside. Add the chopped vegetables to the same frying pan that you used to fry your egg and sauté them with some water until they start to become tender, then add the prepared sauté sauce and the cooked rice and fry everything for 7-10 minutes. Finally, stir the fried egg into the rice, turn off the heat, cover it and let it sit for a few more minutes to allow the egg to re-heat and your egg fried rice is ready to serve.

🇦🇹 A German translation of this recipe is available here 🇩🇪