Chicken Fried Rice is one of the easiest things to make, and it is so versatile that you can customize it a million different ways. To make it even easier, this chicken fried rice recipe uses two frozen Trader Joes products and doctors them up with a few ingredients I typically have in my pantry and refrigerator.
For the chicken fried rice, I used ground chicken, but you can substitute this with any protein you have on hand.
This is my go-to for a quick, one pan and under 30-minute dinner or a quick Monday night meal prep when I spent the whole weekend doing fun things like this one. It’s perfect as a side to a full homemade take-out feast, but you can easily double up your portion for a low point meal.
As described below, this recipe makes 7 1-cup portions for 3 WWSP a serving. This is that good WW math that makes this only 5 WWSP for 2 cups.
Ocean City > Meal Prep
Guys, I love spending my weekend in the kitchen. Really, I do enjoy it. Do you know what I enjoy more? Spontaneous day trips to the shore.
It was 65 degrees and sunny, and we were long overdue for a getaway, so I texted my wife and within 30 minutes we were packed and driving down to Ocean City, NJ. Ocean City is our happy place. My wife and I grew up going to Ocean City and it’s been our favorite place to bring our girls.
Even when it’s too cold to play on the beach, the Ocean City Boardwalk is worth the trip because our girls adore it. We adore it. It’s truly our family’s favorite place to be. By the time we park, our daughters are already shouting to go to their favorite spots.
My oldest: Pokey-dots. My youngest: pizza. Pokey-dots is the name my five-year-old gave a very specific horse on the Carousel in Gillian’s Wonderland Pier. The pizza, as if that’s even a question, is Manco & Manco.
Big Girl Rides
My five-year-old is suddenly five and a big girl. Suddenly our fearless girl is even more fearless and now she’s in a whole new bracket of rides on Playland’s Castaway Cove and Gillian’s Wonderland Pier.
We’re talking roller coasters, the pirate ship, the big swings, more complicated playhouses that are not built for grown men (although of course, she wanted to take me along). This girl is fearless.
Even though she loves the last seat of the pirate ship because it goes the highest, she’s still our little girl who says goodbye to Pokey Dots each time we leave the boardwalk–something she’s done every summer we’ve gone down.
Ocean City has this magical power where nostalgia hits you hard and you remember the little kid rides, the ice cream melting down the hands of the little girl on your shoulders, and each photo strip you’ve kept from the same arcade photo booth.
So about this fried rice
My weekend was magical, but Monday came around and I ate a salad from the cafeteria salad bar for lunch. I didn’t even get a full food shopping trip this weekend. It was time to hit the freezer and lean on some of my favorites.
Trader Joe’s is known for a lot of amazing things people swear by, myself included. Two of my favorite things they have are their frozen Vegetable Fried Rice and their Cauliflower Stir Fry. On their own, they are totally delicious and the cauliflower is a great low point option.
The full bag of Vegetable Fried Rice is 18 WWSP while the Cauliflower Stir Fry is only 3 WWSP. For me, I prefer mixing cauliflower rice in with regular rice to bulk up rice instead of substituting. Cauliflower will never fully replace rice, but mixing it together is a great healthy hack that doesn’t actually taste like cauliflower.
Ground Chicken Fried Rice
I like fried rice because it is versatile, and you can add any protein or vegetables. The recipe below will have my version where I am not utilizing leftovers, but starting from scratch with lean Ground Chicken. This is, of course, optional, but it is a delicious and zero point way to bulk up this side and make it a full meal.
The ingredients that I suggest were not ingredients I grew up with, but I didn’t grow up with many seasonings or exotic vegetables and herbs. None of these are exotic or hard to come by.
Growing up, cilantro and scallions would have been considered exotic and then would have just slowly gone bad in the refrigerator. What may be new to you would be ginger pasta and garlic chili paste.
Ginger paste is something you can find in most produce sections and I love having it in the refrigerator for meals like this or my Chicken and Broccoli. The Garlic Chili Paste is a flavorful, deep flavor that makes any dish pop.
A little goes a long way, and this stuff rocks in this without it being too hot (like my Asian Turkey Meatballs). My girls love this, it’s not spicy, just flavorful. I promise.
Dwardcooks Chicken Fried Rice
Ingredients
- 1 bag Trader Joe’s Vegetable Fried Rice
- 1 bag Trader Joe’s Cauliflower Stir Fry
- 1 lb Ground Chicken lean
- 7 eggs
- 1 tbsp Garlic Chili Paste
- 1 tsp ginger paste or freshly grated ginger
- 4 tbsp low sodium soy sauce divided
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 2 scallions thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro
Instructions
- Mix together ground chicken, ginger, garlic chili paste, garlic, scallions, cilantro, and 1 tbsp soy sauce
- In a large skillet sprayed with cooking spray, brown the ground chicken on medium heat until fully cooked. Remove from the pan and set aside once cooked.
- Give your pan another spray and dump both the vegetable fried rice and cauliflower fried rice. Cook rice mixture for about 8 minutes.
- Make a well in the middle of your pan (like a shape of a donut), give the middle another spray, and pour the eggs into the middle. Cook the eggs until they are scrambled, breaking them up into smaller pieces than you would at breakfast.
- Once the eggs are cooked, mix the whole thing together and add the chicken back in. Add the remaining soy sauce and serve.
