I absolutely love pineapple fried rice! It’s definitely my favorite kind of fried rice and it doesn’t matter if it has chicken or shrimp or is vegetarian, the pineapple is the best part.
We eat a ton of fried rice at home. We call it “trash fried rice” because it usually ends up being the kind of dinner where we throw all the old veggies in that need to be used up because they’re getting old. Who doesn’t do that?? We typically add some frozen chicken sausage to our fried rice to get some extra protein, but there’s nothing wrong with vegetarian fried rice too.
So fried rice is pretty easy to make, you just sauté the protein you want and remove it from the wok. Then you sauté your desired veggies, and add the protein back in with cooked rice and some sauces. That’s it! Sometimes we get lazy and scramble the egg in at the very end, but in order to get the fluffiest scrambled egg pieces, we recommend scrambling separately and setting them aside to be mixed in later.
I should probably also mention that you should definitely use cooked rice that’s already been sitting in the fridge for a couple days. It just doesn’t make much sense to make fried rice from freshly cooked rice, since fried rice is a “fridge cleanout” kind of meal. You should use that freshly cooked rice for something else where the taste of fresh rice actually matters! Plus this is also what makes this meal so quick and easy -- ideally, you already have some cooked rice in the fridge.
It was so fun using the hollowed-out pineapple halves as bowls too! Makes it feel so much more festive. Definitely more than just a “trash fried rice”.
