Rice dishes where the rice is the point, not the side. A few of these are built specifically to use up yesterday's leftover rice, which works far better than fresh.
All 13 recipes
Pad Thai
Pad thai, or also called phad thai, is a stir-fried rice noodle dish from Thailand, it is part of the country's cuisine. It is typically made with rice noodles, shrimp, chicken, beef or tofu, peanuts, a scrambled egg, and bean sprouts, among other vegetables. (from wiki).
Oyakodon
A Tokyo comfort-food classic: chicken and onion simmered in a sweet soy dashi, finished with barely-set egg and slid over hot rice. The name means 'parent and child'.
Tteokbokki
Chewy rice cakes in a glossy sweet-and-spicy sauce, sold on every street corner in Seoul. Dangerously easy to make at home once you have gochujang in the cupboard.
Egg Fried Rice
The benchmark of any home wok cook. Four everyday ingredients, cooked hot and fast, where technique matters far more than the shopping list.
Fresh Spring Rolls
Goi cuon - prawns, herbs and noodles wrapped in rice paper. Nothing is cooked once the wrapping starts, which makes them a genuinely good thing to make with other people.
Chicken Tinola
A clear ginger broth with chicken and green papaya. The lightest thing in the Filipino repertoire, and what gets cooked when somebody in the house is unwell.
Chicken Teriyaki
Real teriyaki is a technique, not a bottled sauce: the glaze is reduced in the pan around the chicken until it lacquers. Four ingredients, no cornflour.
Bibimbap
Rice under a wheel of separately seasoned vegetables, mixed violently together at the table with gochujang. The arranging matters right up until the moment you destroy it.
Pho Bo
Hanoi beef noodle soup. The broth is the whole dish, and charring the ginger and onion before they go in is what gives it that smoky depth.
Arroz Caldo
Filipino chicken and ginger rice porridge, finished with toasted garlic, spring onion and a squeeze of calamansi. What gets cooked when it rains, or when somebody is ill.
Gyudon
Japanese beef and onion rice bowl - thin beef simmered in a sweet-savoury dashi broth and spooned over hot rice. On the table in twenty minutes.
Dakgalbi
Chuncheon-style spicy stir-fried chicken with cabbage, sweet potato and rice cakes, all cooked together on one hot plate and shared straight from the pan.
Beef Chow Fun
Cantonese wide rice noodles seared with beef and bean sprouts. The whole dish lives or dies on getting the pan hot enough to char the noodles without breaking them.