Bonus Story! The magic of frozen rice

For quick dinners and hearty breakfasts, you’re gonna want to put rice on ice

The message today is simple: Freezing leftover rice is a huge timesaver, but shoveling excess takeout or home-cooked grains into a big ol’ baggie is also a great way to cut waste. Cooked rice lasts a surprisingly short time in the fridge; in fact, you gotta eat it in three to four days to avoid a health hazard. Rice harbors a bacteria known as bacillus cereus; heat kills it, but its spores can live on. Freezing stops the baddies from gettin’ busy.

Frozen cooked rice also thaws quickly, and in many dishes it’s actually superior to the fresh stuff. Today we’re using it as a shortcut for a “slow-cooked” comfort food and as a textural boost to make super-crispy fried rice in a flash. 

Get ready for a grain freeze

A chilly shortcut has us eating this hearty dish on repeat. Credit: Gabriella Vigoreaux

Congee is a slow-cooked Chinese rice porridge typically eaten at breakfast, but it’s honestly good any time of day. It’s a nourishing dish on its own, and it’s even better with a little soy sauce and sesame oil, topped with various accouterments like soft-boiled eggs, scallions, fried shallots, and mushrooms. We also like to reach for it as a chicken-soup alternative when a cold’s catching on: Just load it up with ginger and enough chili oil to shock those taste buds back to life. To make it, rice cooks in a proportionally large amount of water or broth over a long period of time until the grains break down—usually somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes. 

It’s a marvelously easy dish, albeit a little time-consuming. Unless you have frozen rice at the ready, in which case the process goes like this: 

1. Add 1 cup of cooked, frozen rice to a stockpot with 5 cups of veggie broth or water. This is your congee base, which is wonderfully filling all on its own. 

2. If you want to dress it up, add any flavorings you like. We tossed in two of our stir-fry cubes, but you could also throw in some ginger, garlic, sesame oil, and soy sauce. 

3. Let it come to a boil and leave it for 20 minutes, stirring often so the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom. 

4. Prep your toppings. We roasted some wild mushrooms and soft-boiled an egg for a little extra protein. 

5. Garnish if you’re feeling fancy. We drizzled on some chili crisp and sliced scallions.

This recipe takes less than half the time of a traditional congee because the formation of ice crystals breaks down the structure of the grains. In fact, that’s why the quick-congee trick can also work with raw, rinsed rice, but trust us: You’ll get way more use out of a stash of frozen cooked grains. It comes in clutch for quick stir-frys and dishes that call for dried-out, day-old rice.

A hands-off ‘fried’ rice that’s faster than takeout

Fried rice is a perfect vessel to use up leftovers or the random halves of things you’ve stashed in the freezer. This one-pan recipe leans on the chiller in a few different ways so you can whip up homemade takeout any time the craving strikes. In this dish, a mix of frozen veggies, edamame, and a speedy stir-fry sauce (or a few cubes of our make-ahead version) turn leftover grains into a filling meal. You don’t even need a skillet—just toss everything on a sheet pan and let the oven finish the job your freezer started. 

A super-hot sheet pan creates extra crispy bits. Credit: Gabriella Vigoreaux