While I would much prefer to have fresh shrimp, living inland doesn’t really allow for that very much.

Luckily, you can buy deveined and already peeled shrimp in the freezer section of your grocery store. Not as good as fresh (but cheaper than the ‘just thawed out, because you don’t live at the beach’ shrimp they sell for twice as much at the meat counter, making people think they are getting ‘fresh’ shrimp – you’re really just getting previously frozen, conveniently defrosted, shrimp if you live inland. That said, I will buy the frozen version and thaw it myself – saving at least 50% of the cost of the shrimp!

I try to keep some shrimp in the freezer for nights just like tonight – when I don’t have any other protein already thawed for dinner. Shrimp is easy to defrost at home. I put mine in a colander and just run cool water over it until it is thawed – and it’s ready to go! Enter tonight’s meal of shrimp fried rice!

You can cook your fried rice in a wok or large skillet. It just has to be a pan that can withstand high heat – as one of the keys to a good stir fry is the high temp. Additionally, using cold rice is a way to keep your stir fry from being too mushy. Then, it is just a matter of adding in the vegetables that you like! I cooked the ‘components’ separately for the most part – and then tossed them back together to finish it off.

Shrimp Fried Rice

3 tablespoons of oil (I used sesame oil)
1 lb of shrimp (I used deveined, peeled shrimp from the freezer section)
4 cups cooked, chilled white rice
1 1/2 cups of frozen peas and carrots
1/2 onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups of snow peas
1 tbsp minced garlic
3 eggs
3-4 tbsp (or to taste) low sodium soy sauce
1 tbsp Siracha sauce
1/2 tsp chili powder
salt/pepper to taste
sesame seeds and chopped green onions for garnish

• Get wok hot and add 1 tbsp of the oil to pan
• Add shrimp and garlic to the pan
• Cook shrimp until pink (add chili powder and a little bit of salt and pepper during cooking)
• Remove shrimp from wok
• Add 1 tbsp of oil to pan
• Add vegetables to wok and stir for 3-4 minutes, remove from wok
• Add remaining oil and crack all 3 eggs into oil – quickly scramble eggs in the wok
• Add rice to wok – try to keep rice touching as much of the wok as possible (to allow for crispiness of the rice) – letting it sit for 3-4 min before stirring.
• Quickly stir rice around, picking up the crispy bits from the pan
• Add the vegetables back into the pan
• Add soy sauce and Siracha and stir, until well mixed (don’t overwork, as you don’t want the rice to become mushy).
• Serve with sesame seeds and green onions