Peruvian · Main

Arroz Chaufa

Intermediate
20 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost

nutty-toasted · aromatic · smoky · sweet-edged Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, aromatics blooming from the first bite, trailing gentle sweetness.

Ingredients

600 g cooked long grain rice, a day old and fridge cold
250 g chicken thigh, in 1 cm dice
3 eggs, beaten with a pinch of salt
6 spring onions, whites and greens kept separate
45 ml sillao, light and dark soy mixed
15 ml toasted sesame oil
20 g kion (fresh ginger), minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
45 ml neutral oil with a high smoke point
2 g white pepper
1 red pepper, in strips

Equipment

Wok

The skills inside

Wok technique Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias Shaping by hand

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · egg · soy · sesame

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Break the cold rice apart with wet hands until no grain clings to another; if it smears, it is still too warm to fry.
Take the wok to smoking, oil it and set a thin omelette from the beaten eggs; slide it out, roll it and cut it into ribbons.
Re-oil, lay the chicken in a single layer and leave it until it releases from the metal and is browned, then add the kion, garlic, red pepper and onion whites for 20 seconds, until fragrant and just short of colouring.
Add the rice and toss it against the hot metal until the grains dance loose and a faint scorched smell rises.
Pour the sillao down the hot side of the wok, toss once, then kill the heat and fold in the egg ribbons, the onion greens, the sesame oil and the white pepper.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Wok technique 28 recipes

Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.

Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.

Shaping by hand 85 recipes

The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.

Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.

At the Table

The Pour: Pinot Noir or Gamay
Also Right: Chenin Blanc
From the Taps: Bière de garde
Zero-Proof: Verbena iced tea

Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.

Family notes

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Arroz Chaufa Technique: Wok technique★ A canon film, verified Technique: BraisingThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Peruvian kitchen