Easy Fried Rice Recipe to Use up Leftovers (2024)

Need an easy dinner idea for those days when you just can’t?! This Veggie Fried Rice dish will help you waste less food and spend less time in the kitchen. Use up random leftovers, including rice cooked in homemade chicken bone broth,for a really frugal and quick dish.

Call it what you want, but everyone needs to get rid of some leftovers sometimes, right?

We eat a lot of leftovers here at the Kimball house. In fact, when we have fewer than three different options for leftovers to grab for lunch, we feel deprived, and if we are all home on a weekend and don’t have any leftovers for lunch, we’re a bit lost (and hungry). I even ended up making a whole new meal like I’d make for dinner at lunchtime on Sunday, a rarity.

Typically we have the opposite problem: We need to use up some stuff in the fridge to make space for new stuff.

(C.O.R.N. is an acronym for “Clean Out the Refrigerator Night,” by the way.)

As much as we enjoy just eating our leftovers straight up, sometimes three bean soup available in The Everything Beans Book for three days in a row starts to get a bit old.

What’s in There?

I love recipes that can help me look into the fridge, say, “What’s in there?” and then make something new out of it. In this case, veggie fried rice is also an excellent way to get something to eat when I have practically nothing on hand, as long as there are some frozen veggies to tap into.

And better yet, it’s super, super, fast. Almost faster than just steaming broccoli and adding salt and pepper, I kid you not.

The only caveat is that you need to start with cooked rice, which means one of three things:

1. You plan ahead and cook some rice well before suppertime so you’re ready to put this together.
2. You plan way ahead and schedule a meal that uses rice for the day or two before, then make a double batch.
3. You start a new habit – anytime you make rice, make a double or triple batch and freeze the leftovers in two or four-cup servings. You can put a bag of frozen rice on the counter for half an hour and easily get it out into the pot for dinner.

My son Paul wrote a real cookbook!

He and 4 friends have published a cookbook by kids, for kids, all healthy foods — Chef Junior.

This recipe is one that inspired him to tweak it for the book!

If you want to see how kids write to kids and get some fab bonuses for supporting these 5 teen authors, buy the book and then redeem the bonuses the kids created!

Take a look!

When Rice is Ready…

…lots of things come together easily and quickly. Number three up there has been a new habit of mine, and I rather enjoy it.

I’ve been testing out a Vitaclay Smart Cooker, which is a rice cooker and slow cooker in one, and it makes it really easy to make 3 or 4 cups of dry rice at a time (it can do up to 8, but I haven’t gone farther than 4 yet).

The point is that when I make 3 or 4 servings of rice, I end up ready for many of our meals throughout the week. I can do a quick stir fry or this fried rice side dish if I haven’t planned well, and I can plan all sorts of things that call for rice while I’m meal planning dinner, knowing that I won’t have to soak it the night before or be home an hour before dinner in order to get the brown rice started.

I haven’t done it yet, but I could even make a quick rice pudding dessert or rice-based porridge for breakfast. I always think I make more than we’ll really need, but then I rarely even end up with any to freeze.

My next goal is to branch out to other grains: I need to convince my husband to give quinoa a chance, and I might try spelt and see if the gluten content is tolerable for my husband, who also doesn’t like the texture of little grains like millet, sadly. Any other whole grain ideas for me that are versatile enough to use like rice? I should check the KS group at Plan to Eat – have you seen that there are over 60,000 recipes to tap into there? If you’ve been avoiding trying PTE because you don’t want to input all your recipes, you can at least give it a try with the 30-day trial and all these new recipes.

This fried rice recipe was inspired by Shaina’s beautiful spring fried rice over at Food for my Family – she is a much better chef than I am, so her version is more culinary (a real wok, fresh ginger, for example) and uses veggies you’ll bump into precisely at this time of year (garlic scapes, pea pods). Mine is just quick and simple because I did it without taking the time to pull up her recipe! I’ve re-tested it a few times since then, though, don’t worry, and it’s gotten good reviews from friends when I served it for this “company meal.”

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We’ve found that we love throwing in a few eggs after everything else is cooked, and the recipe is even part of the Kids Cook Real Food eCourse! Find a way for your kids to help you make this dish – which can be a simple main course or hearty side – next Monday and join the Kids Cook Monday initiative!

Your kids can learn to cook, even if you don’t know where to start

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You really can use any veggies you have on hand, from a bag of mixed frozen veggies to half a carton of mushrooms that will go to waste if you don’t use them, from any greens you can chop to broccoli, fresh or frozen. I’ve used anywhere from 2-4 cups veggies, depending on what other sides I have going (i.e. do I need a grain side dish or a veggie side?).

What’s your favorite “use it up” recipe?

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