Take away chicken fried rice us lovely. homemade is tasteless. Is it because I don't use monosodiumglutamate ?

[Oblomov]

if you love take away rice, why is home made stuff so tasteless. What Am I doing wrong. I have worked in chinese takeaways and top class restuarants and I suspect that unfortunately I actually like the difference that monosodium makes. Now that is a bit sad isn't it.
Please tell me I am wrong.
We have loads of chicken in the fridge and dh wants to make it tonight, but I don't think its worth it.
Please convince me.

I love chicken fried rice but don't mind where it comes from. How do you make it at home? I just add peas, spring onions, chicken and soy sauce (sometimes a sprinkle of 5 spice).

You can buy bags of MSG in Chinese supermarkets. Breastmilk is full of MSG so it's Offically Good For You now.

I don't use it in mine. What are you putting in. I do garlic, onions, chicken, peas, oyster sauce, soy sauce, eggs, salt and sometimes peppers and mushrooms if I have them. I have it with msg at work sometimes but I prefer without because msg makes me so thirsty.

watching this with interest because I'd like to make food like takeaways, including curries and its never the same

I suspect the huge amounts of oil and salt that can go into takeaway fried rice helps. It's like biryani - and that has loads of oil and salt, if it tastes good.

If you fry the onion in sesame oil that should inject a good bit of flavour, it's quite strong.

before or after adding water?

My mil makes proper fabulous fried rice, it involves a LOT of soy sauce and oil!!

Use cold rice cooked the day before and kept in the fridge. Dont stint on the oil.

I normally fry onion/garlic/ginger in sesame oil, bung in rice + chicken stock, stick lid on and ignore on low heat for 10 mins. Then chuck in the leftover chicken and a few chopped spring onions, and a good dash of soy sauce, et voila! Sorry can't give quantities as it's all guesswork in this house, but it seems to taste pretty good and no msg required

In terms of cups I think it is one cup rice to 1.5 cups water/stock... Hopefully someone will come along and verify that

Thanks for all the replies.
I found this link: recipe and followed his recipe and it was delicious.
Dh said it was 'more than fantastic' and I do cook a good meal, lots of his other favourites, so I know he really meant it.

The only thing I did different was fried the chicken in garlic , using one of those tubes of gia garlic puree in vegetable oil. Plus I didn't lemon juice the rice.

Aromat.

I make good fried rice, I use a whole bulb of garlic, chopped up fine, plenty of oil, chili paste with shrimp (you can buy this in the Chinese supermarket), and plenty of sweet soy sauce.

No MSG.

Plus since getting a microcomputer-controlled rice cooker, it's improved the fried rice markedly.

You are looking for the Umami taste I think - often delivered by MSG but also by Soya Sauce and other things!! see this