I don’t really believe in fried rice recipes. To me, fried rice is meant to be an empty canvas filled with an unorthodox hodgepodge of whatever weird leftovers can be found in the fridge or pantry. Half a cabbage? Sure! An especially ripe jar of kimchi? Excellent! A can of tuna? Why not!
But when I saw the fried rice recipe on the side of a Hondashi instant bonito soup stock box, I was intrigued. For starters, I’ve only ever used Hondashi for its actual stated purpose: making bonito soup stock, for miso soups or soba dipping sauce. It never occurred to me that the MSG-laced powder could actually work in dry applications (even though I use chicken bouillon and MSG all the time in my typical fried rice). Perhaps the small pebble shapes of the dashi powder, which don’t necessarily look like they’ll dissolve without liquid, is why I never considered seasoning my dryer dishes with it.
I also was curious how the fried rice would turn out, seeing that the instructions were three short sentences that read as follows:
Stir fry 6 shrimps, 1 egg, 14oz of rice in 1 tbsp of sesame oil. Add 2 tsp of Hondashi (trademark) with 1 tsp of soy sauce. Top with green onions and serve.
There’s no mention of salt or pepper or garlic, three things I include in all my fried rice. There’s no stir-fried onions. You don’t even season the shrimp before you add them! There was no way this could work, I concluded. But the power of MSG was out to prove me wrong.
To start, using toasted sesame oil rather than a neutral cooking oil imparts flavor to the dish from the beginning. Although the shrimp weren’t seasoned, they still toasted in the oil, adding their own briny and sweet notes. I cracked open an egg and scrambled it before adding the rice and folding everything together. At first, it looked subpar and bland. To me, the addition of a single teaspoon of soy sauce and two teaspoons of the dry bonito powder didn’t seem like it would be enough to fully flavor the dish.
But as I added the soy sauce and Hondashi, the rice took on color and actually began to look… appetizing. And when I tasted it, lo and behold: salt! The savory and slightly smoky qualities of the powdered bonito stock infiltrated every crevice of the fried rice and the soy sauce added an additional layer of umami, as well as some much needed color.
The fried rice is garnished with fresh green onions, as all good fried rice should be, and I’m surprised to say that this extremely simple Hondashi recipe works.
Are there things I would change? Absolutely. I’d included garlic, for starters, and freshly ground black pepper. I might finish the dish with a squeeze of lemon to freshen it up and add a puckeriness to the shrimp. I’d also season the shrimp, even with something as simple as a shake of salt and pepper, just to build more flavor from the get-go.
Given how short the recipe is, I also think it places an expectation on the person following it to actually have some cooking chops — it’s up to you not to overcook the shrimp or mash the wet eggs with dried rice, lest you wind up with clumpy fried rice. There’s no real timing to consider, nor any mention of how hot your pan should be. Still, I think the recipe is easy enough to manage that even beginner cooks can figure it out.
Although I haven’t changed my mind about whether we should be following fried rice recipes to a tee in the first place, what has changed is that now when I make fried rice, I’m more likely to include Hondashi as an extra flavor booster.
