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This year, we’ve made a huge change! I’m now making home lunches daily for all four of our kids. Why did we make the change? The main reason was the cost. For 4 kids, we were paying $200 a month for school provided lunches, which they didn’t always love eating.
Now that we’ve gone to daily homemade lunches, we can avoid the “bad lunch” days because I can cater their lunches to what they like to eat. Plus, I can make delicious meals for all of them at a lower cost than school lunches. One of the ways I help to reduce what we spend on meals is to use Safeway’s Just for U program. I recently used Just for U to save on a package of Hillshire Brand’s Smoked Sausage to make one of my kids favorite lunches – fried rice.
I often make fried rice with leftover meats from previous meals, but if I don’t have any leftovers, I’ll use a package of smoked sausage or Spam. It has great flavor, the kids LOVE it, and it’s a great way for me to add protein into the dish.
If you’d like to save while shopping at Safeway, download the app – Safeway‘s Just for U program. If you’re a Von’s shopper, this works there too!
Fried Rice Recipe
Fried rice is one of the quickest and easiest meals to make. It’s almost full proof and you can change up the ingredients/seasonings to suite your personal taste. For example, I like to add gochujang paste to my serving of fried rice because I love the sweet and spicy flavor that it give the rice. My kids prefer it with more oyster sauce and no fish sauce, while my husband likes it anyway it’s made.
The recipe below is a basic recipe that you can add to or change seasonings depending on your protein of choice. For the tastiest fried rice, cook two to three slices of bacon and use the bacon grease to “fry” the rice. Chop the bacon and add it into the rice after you cook the eggs and add the sauce.
Fried Rice
Ingredients
Rice
- Optional - 3 slices of bacon, thin sliced (see notes)
- 3 eggs (scrambled)
- 4 cups cold Rice (day old rice is best)
- 3/4 cups diced carrots
- 1/2 cup onions, diced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1/2 cup peas
- 9 oz Hillshire Farms Smoked Sausage or can of Spam, cubed
- 4 stalks green onions, chopped
- 2 tablespoons butter (oil can be substituted)
- salt/pepper
- gochujang or sriracha for heat (opitonal)
Sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster Sauce (If omitting the fish sauce, add another Tablespoon of Oyster Sauce)
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce (optional)
Instructions
Sauce
- Combine all the sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.
Fried Rice
- In a bowl, scramble eggs and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
- Heat a large pan on medium-high heat and add one tablespoon of butter (optional, cook bacon, remove, and use bacon grease) with carrots, onions, and garlic. Saute until the onions and carrots are softened, about 3-5 minutes
- Add frozen peas and sausage/spam and cook until the peas begin to defrost. Move the entire mix to one side of the pan. Pour scrambled eggs into the cleared side of the pan. When the eggs start to set, stir them around until you get bits of scrambled eggs. Then, mix the ingredients in the pan.
- Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the vegetable mixture and add in the cold rice. Mix well. Fry rice and vegetable mixture in the pan for about 3-5 minutes.
- Add in the sauce and mix to evenly distribute. Cook for 3-5 minutes or until the rice is warmed through.
- Before serving, sprinkle on chopped green onions. Drizzle on sriracha or add a bit of gochujang paste if you want some heat.
Notes
For the tastiest fried rice, cook two to three slices of bacon and use the bacon grease to “fry” the rice. Chop the bacon and add it into the rice after you cook the eggs and add the sauce.
Feel free to substitute ingredients with what you have leftover in the fridge and to suit your taste. This dish is a great way to use up ingredients in your fridge/pantry.
Yum! I love fried rice, that might be for lunch today. Thanks for linking up with the Retro Repin party. I hope your having a great Wednesday!
LOVE fried rice and this is a fun twist on a classic! Thanks!
Yum! This looks great, with lots of flavor 🙂 Thank you so much for sharing your recipe at Together on Tuesday!!!
Hi Erlene! This dish look great! I am featuring it tomorrow on my P3 features. Also I wanted to let you know your twitter social media link goes to an error page. I don’t want you to miss out on followers.
Kim
Thanks for letting me know. I’ll make sure to fix it.
Hello sweet lady! This looks incredible. Pinned. We appreciate you taking the time to party with us. We hope to see you on Monday at 7 pm. We love partying with you!
Happy Monday! Lou Lou Girls
Thanks for always stopping and hosting a great link party. I’ve linked up 🙂
Yummmy!! My kids so enjoy fried rice…I could see this being a staple recipe 🙂
Thanks for joining us on this past week of “Inspired By Me Mondays!!”
So glad you were able to link up; please be sure to come back again next week 🙂
Thanks for stopping and hosting a great link party. I’m behind on commenting and linking up, but I’m slowly catching up.
G’day! Looks great Erlene and I can almost smell it from here! Pinned!
Cheers! Joanne
#ibabloggers
Thanks for pinning Joanne, you are so awesome!
Hi Erlene, your fried rice looks delicious! That’s what I love about fried rice is using leftover meat and rice to put in it. That’s a great idea to make the kids lunches instead of paying for ones they won’t even eat. My son’s school has breakfast and lunch provided for free for all students but last year, he didn’t eat their food at all so we did have to make his lunch. Pinning and sharing this. 🙂
I would love to use more leftovers, but since the boys are older (teens), there isn’t much leftover anymore…lol. Thanks for pinning and sharing.
I’m so glad you shared this with us at Home Matters so I could put it on our Pin Board! I have told my husband about your Fried Rice. I think he is going to make it 🙂
Did he make it? I have a tip, cook 2 -3 pieces of bacon and “fry” the rice in it. Then follow the recipe and add in the cooked bacon too.
This looks and sounds delicious! I always made my kids lunches for school… cheaper and healthier. PINNED. 🙂
~Lorelai
Life With Lorelai
Lunches weren’t too bad in price before, but once they hit middle school/high school the lunch prices jumped and it just isn’t cost effective anymore. We started the year with half school bought and homelunch, but it’s just too expensive.
Looking yummy! Homemade is so much better and less expensive, you go girl!
Yes. Soooo much less expensive 🙂
My husband and I love Fried Rice. He is the Fried Rice specialist at our house. The only meat we have ever put in it is shrimp but we may have to try the sausages! We don’t have the Safeway stores here but I think they may be part of the Kroger chain which we do have! Pinning this recipe to my Good Eats board.
Fried rice specialist…love it! I’ve used all kinds of stuff in fried rice and shrimp is actually one of my favorites. Each protein adds a slightly different flavor and the sauce/seasoing will need adjusting, but that’s why I love fried rice. You can make it anyway you like.
Heck yeah! Husbands ought to be special cooks too 🙂 He is also big about baking and I like that!
Great idea Erlene! It’s been a while since I’ve made fried rice, but I sure do love it. You are right that cold rice works best, but that means I have to remember to cook it the night before. I should just make up rice to always have on hand each week.
We eat rice almost daily, so we usually have some leftovers 🙂 My kids love fried rice and it’s so easy to make.
I have never made fried rice because I thought it was complicated. You made it look easy! I will have to try it now. And the coupon is great! Thanks.
It’s super easy and really you can make it to suite your own taste. It’s a great way to use up leftovers.
Okay, it’s almost lunch time and that looks SO good! Now, is the gochujang what looks like the dried cranberries in there? I was like, dried cranberries in fried rice, WOW!
Hi Kristen. Yes…lol. I love gochujang paste…it’s like a sweet and spicy paste and is perfect for someone who doesn’t like things burning spicy hot, but likes a little bit of kick.
Sounds yummy!
So glad you decided to make the change to cut on cost! And I am sure a home cooked meal is so much better for them. A lot more work for you but it is worth it!!! I have to agree with the kids, fried rices is one of my favorite meals of all time!
Yes, school lunches are getting ridiculously expensive and I do like knowing exactly what they are eating.
We love fried rice at our house, and I love the ease of preparation when I remember to make the rice ahead of time. It seems to do best when its cold anyway.
I’ve never tried making it with smoked sausage or gochujang. If its spicy, my husband will love it! Thanks for sharing your recipe. Pinning, tweeting and stumbling.
Thanks so much for all the shares Karen. Yes, cold rice is a must to me. I’ve tried with fresh cooked and it gets too mushy. I used to make it “Hawaii” style with a Hawaiian island canned meat or shrimp, but the kids like the sausage. I like to add a bit of gochujang paste to mine because I like the sweet/spicy added flavor.
Looks amazing! I would have to make it veggie but I’m definitely pinning this one as a keeper!
You could definitely make it all veggie 🙂 Thanks for pinning.
Since all of my children are grown, I didn’t realize that school lunches were so expensive these days! I’m sure your children love that you are making them homemade lunches that actually taste good! And that fried rice looks so delicious. May I eat it for breakfast? Pinning!
I know…isn’t it getting so expensive?! I’m dating myself, but school lunches used to be 25 cents…lol. Thanks for pinning and yes, have some for breakfast 🙂