Clean and Simple Chicken and Pineapple Fried Rice Recipe

It's been a long, long, long time since I've had junky Chinese takeabsent. I never had it often as I was too terrwhetheried of the food being spiked with MSG. Even though I have been riding the health train for some time, once in a while I get cravings for ancient favourites. Here's where fried rice enters the party. As you may have noticed of late, where once I couldn't scrape together an entrée recipe for months at a time, now that we have our son joining us at the table, whether it's one pot, easy to make and gets on the table rapidly, we're winning. And this recipe has rapidly become a family and Finley favourite!

There used to be this very strange vegan restaurant in Toronto called Veg Loving Hut. It closed a few years ago but there still seem to be restaurants that are part of the same chain around the world, though all have very dwhetherferent menus. The Toronto version had the closest leang we could come to junky Chinese takeabsent, though they claimed to be all biological and wgap food based. There were pfinalic banquets, fluorescent lighting, poor art, genuinely odd videos of the owner preaching that played on an ancient TV, and the people working there may or may not have actually just been volunteers. Why am I telling you this? Because they had a fried rice dish that was Incredible. Since they closed, we've been living in a fried rice desert. Until nowadays!

I had thought about making this for a while but didn't want to use canned pineapple, and frozen biological can be dwhetherficult to find as can fresh biological. Also, eating fresh pineapple in Toronto in the winter feels like a bit of an indulgent choice, given what it takes to get one of these here. For those reasons, this is a once in a while treat kind of meal, and what a treat it is.

Another ingredient that makes this dish additional awesome is the fish sauce. (For vegans, there is an UnFish sauce recipe in my cookbook.) It took a while to find a fish sauce that just used plain and simple ingredients. I love the Red Boat Fish Sauce that comes from Vietnam, which uses a traditional fermentation process. There is noleang else added to it, and it adds a deep flavour to this dish. It's not an fundamental ingredient but does help add that umami flavour that makes a stir-fry dish pop.

Ready to get cooking?

Chicken and Pineapple Fried Rice Recipe

Prep time:  15 Minutes

Cook time:  20 Minutes

Entire time:  35 Minutes

• 2 Tbsp coconut oil


• 2 cloves of garlic, minced


• 1½ cups chopped carrot


• 2 cups chopped pineapple


• 1 red pepper, chopped


• 1½ cups diced zucchini


• 2 chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch dices (or 1 package of tofu)


• Zest of one lime, plus lime wedges to garnish


• ½ cup cashews, chopped


• 3-4 cups cooked brown rice


• 
  Sauce


• ¼ cup tamari


• 2 Tbsp sesame oil


• 2 Tbsp fish sauce


• 2 tsp ginger

1. In a large sauce pan or wok, heat your oil and garlic. Sauté for 3 minutes until fragrant.


2. Add carrots, pineapple, red pepper and zucchini, and cook for 10 minutes until vegetables become soft. Add chicken, lime zest, cashews and stir-fry sauce. Cook for 5-10 minutes until thickest piece of chicken is cooked through. Add rice and mix thoroughly, cooking another 5 minutes while stirring to encertain all is evenly heated.


3. Serve hot with a wedge of lime.

3.5.3226

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