Flat Top Chicken Fried Rice

This Flat Top Chicken Fried Rice recipe is ideal for a quick weeknight meal, a great way to use up any leftover chicken, and a whole lot easier than trying to fry rice in your kitchen.

Word of warning, this isn’t one of those super healthy meals. There’s a lot butter and oil going on here to give our Chicken Fried Rice some taste. Feel free to leave out the butter if you’re looking to reduce some of the the fat content.

Flat Top Cooking Method

In my mind, using a flat top is the ideal way of cooking up Chicken Fried Rice. I have a similar fried rice recipe that you can follow when you are confined to the kitchen, but using a flat top makes things so much easier.

With my kitchen recipe you need to cook the ingredients in multiple batches, and transfer them to separate bowls. Then you need to be super careful that you aren’t throwing rice all over the kitchen while you are frying it. Chicken Fried Rice is meant for a flat top griddle.

With the flat top, especially if your have a Traeger or Blackstone out on your deck or patio, you don’t have to worry about the mess as much. If you have a dog, even bigger bonus.

Cooking Tips

Cook the rice in advance and give it a chance to cool. It’s easier to work with and will prevent the rice from being too mushy in the final dish.

The sauce. This is one of the first things you’ll want to whip up. Mix up the ingredients in a small bowl and set it aside. The cook is going to go fast, and you’ll want to have everything prep’d and ready to go when you need it.

The chicken… Chicken Fried Rice is the perfect opportunity to use up any leftover chicken. That’s why I love this recipe. Option 2 is to buy a whole rotisserie chicken, carve it up and use a portion of that in the recipe. Option 3 is to dice up some boneless/skinless chicken breast and fry that up. If you’re not a chicken fan, feel free to use any other protein. One of these day’s I’m going to try shrimp.

The veggies… It seems traditional Chicken Fried Rice uses peas and carrots. I can’t stand cooked peas, and won’t use them in anything. The easiest method of using veggies is to use a bag of frozen peas & carrots. My go to is using fresh carrots and dice them into small bits. Fry them up a bit with some oil on your flat top before adding to the Fried Rice mixture. That’s the bomb. Gives just a bit of crunch and texture to the final dish.

I’ve also used water chestnuts and diced them up into smaller pieces. Again gives you some additional texture, that makes the recipe pop. The soft rice, chewy chicken, and crunch vegetables all combine perfectly.

Bottom line, use any vegetable you like and have laying around. It’s just cooking.