Make a Breakfast Burrito With Last Night’s Fried Rice
The best fried rice is made from leftover rice. In particular, rice that has already been cooked and then dried , usually refrigerated. The best breakfast burritos, in turn, are made from leftover fried rice—or at least that’s what was inside the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating.
It all started with an order for phat kaphrao, which is not a fried rice dish, but a Thai dish made with meat fried with Thai holy basil and served with rice. It was a very generous (very spicy) portion and I was able to stretch it out over several meals. The first one was consumed as is (obviously). The second meal was a kind of do-it-yourself fried rice – leftover meat and rice fried in oil and seasoned with a little soy sauce. (It was amazing.) However, I still had leftovers from that second iteration, which I wasn’t mad about.
The third and final meal consisted of a breakfast burrito: spiced pork with basil, rice, an egg, some ham and some cheese, all mixed into a warm tortilla. The Thai take the burrito from a good breakfast to a great one, with heat, umami (thanks to the fancy fish sauce) and herbal flavor (thanks to the holy basil) just what I needed to balance the richness of eggs and cheese. . (Call it a “merge” if you like, but it’s really just a woman using her leftovers to the best of her ability.)
You don’t have to make your own fried rice to take advantage of this maneuver. Any fried rice, either takeaway or homemade, will work just fine. Start by heating the rice in a non-stick skillet over medium heat. Once it’s hot and crackling, make a hole in the middle of the rice and crack one or two eggs in, then stir quickly before mixing into the rice. Add any other (cooked) breakfast meat you want, then toss in some cheese, take the pan off the heat and let it melt. While the cheese is melting, heat the tortilla on the stove until it develops nice brown spots, then place the filling on top, roll it up and take it in your mouth.