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LPTHW Ex. 36 Challenge - Fried Rice, Rice Baby! pt. 1

So over a year ago when I decided to apply to Hackbright and first came across the expertise essay portion, the prompt did not yet include the "but please...no recipes!" part. I'm guessing this was later added on because recipes seem to be the easy way out for this part of the application. After all, every recipe is naturally a step-by-step process.

Anyway, I wanted to do a recipe not because it seemed like the easy way out, but because I'm a huge fan of cooking. More often than not when I cook around my friends, I end up spending 15-20min spewing the recipe to them out of excitement (which they probably just pretended to be interested in).

One thing I'm really good at cooking is fried rice. It's one of the first things I learned how to cook when I was [basically] a toddler, and after years of cooking it I can practically do it in my sleep now. I never realized there was a science/formula to it until I tried to explain it to someone. For instance, you have to scramble the egg first separately from everything else, but only 3/4 way there to being fully cooked. But wait, if there's some greasier type of meat you want to use in your fried rice like bacon, you should conserve on your oil and just use bacon oil to cook the eggs, so the order in which the ingredients go in the pan gets all reshuffled again.

Now that I'm tasked in LPTHW with creating my own mini if-else-while-for-loop game, I can now revisit what I never got to submit for my Hackbright application: How to make some fly, fried rice, rice baby! (Note: my final expertise essay was better than a recipe for fried rice, just putting that out there in case you're wondering)

In this Part I, I will outline what needs to be done in plain English.

Let's cook up some fried rice!

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#We are going to assume that you have the essentials: oil, salt, pepper

Ingredient Check:

1. Do you have day-old rice?

    a. Yes -> move to step 2

    b. No -> Go make some rice and come back to this tomorrow! break();

2. Do you have eggs?

    a. Yes -> move to step 3

    b. No -> Go to the grocery store and get some! I recommend Trader Joe's; their eggs are hella cheap!

3. Do you have meat/protein you want to add?

    a. Yes -> All right, things are gonna get beef'd up here! Is the meat on the greasier, drier or moist side (think bacon vs. chicken vs. shrimp)

        1. Greasier/high fat content (bacon/pork belly, ground beef/pork) -> meat.append(1)

        2. Drier/ med-low fat content (chicken, turkey, pork/beef strips, tofu/soy) -> meat.append(2)

        3. Moist (seafood) -> meat.append(3)

    b. No -> Keeping it simple, I like it.

4. Do you have veggies you want to add?

    a. Yes

        1. Keeping it healthy, go you! If it's something you need more than 5-7 min to cook (think: potatoes, squash), prepare beforehand

    b. No

        1. It's ok, veggies are overrated sometimes ;)

5. Additional flavor makers:

    a. green onions

    b. garlic

    c. soy sauce

#note: when we've reached this point, assuming user has bare minimum w/ essential ingredients: rice and eggs.

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 #based on given ingredients, append instructions to full recipe print out

Cooking Process

1. Check meat status (skip to 2 if no meat)

meat codes: 1=greasier; 2=drier; 3=moist

if meat[0] == 1:

    a. cook meat so you can use the fat. remove meat.

    b. if lots of grease, pour some out

    c. if not much fat, add a little more oil. careful not to coat too much of the pan

if meat[0] ==2:

    a. append instructions 2-5, 7

if meat[0]==3:

    a. append instructions 1, 4-8

2. Scramble and cook the eggs. Do not fully cook the eggs! Remove eggs and set aside once they are 2/3 way cooked

3. Cook your meat, when it's cooked on the outside, go to step 4

4. Add your day-old rice into the pan, break up the grains if they're sticking together

5. Using any of the flavor makers?

   1. If yes, choose from the below

    a. Using green onion

        1. slice and separate the white & light green portions from the dark green

        2. add in the white & light green parts to the pan and saute

    d. mince the garlic and add to pan. Sautee!

    e. season with salt, pepper, (and dash of soy sauce if using)

   2. if no, skip to step 6

6. Add in your seafood and cook until color/texture has changed indicating it's cooked. move the rice to other side of pan to make room

7. Add egg back in the pan, stir around until cooked

8. Add green parts of the green onion in the pan, stir in with the rest and serve!