Fried Rice and Rice Toppings

Tinapa and danggit take a swim in leftover rice to make this smoky, salty tinapa 

 You'll find two types of eggs here, too: 

 for heft, and itlog na maalat (salted egg)—which you should 

 in fried rice!—for umami. Because it's so full of flavor, you can eat this fried rice on its own.

Before making this recipe, make sure you've fried your danggit. To do that, simply fry the dried fish in a bit of oil until crisp. Once cool enough to handle, chop it up into smaller pieces.

You can adapt this fried rice to whatever you have on hand. Feel like adding extra meat or vegetables? Go for it. Just make sure your 

 are chopped and ready before cooking. Fried rice cooks fast—once you start, you won't have the time to stop.

Tinapa Fried Rice

Salted fish fried rice, but make it Pinoy. Toss your leftover rice with tinapa flakes, chopped fried danggit, and eggs.

There's no better back pocket recipe than 

 you throw at it—leftovers, wilting veggies, your favorite condiments—and turn it into a hearty, filling meal any time of the day.

Spiff up your leftover rice with these fried rice recipes, which take inspiration from dishes we love, from 

Headline Title

Sauce

Inasal Fried Rice

Shawarma Fried Rice

For Serving

Ramen Fried Rice

Laksa Paste

Laksa Fried Rice

For Garnish

Lechon Paksiw Rice

Mix-Ins

Hotpot Fried Rice

Pepper Lunch Fried Rice

7 Easy Fried Rice Recipes, from Inasal to Shawarma

A collection of simple fried rice recipes that will impress your Asian parents, but fuss-free enough to throw together anytime.

, you make adobo flakes. It's how Glenda Barretto, the restauranteur behind 

 invented it in the 70's. She made the toasted flakes for her father, 

 by shredding leftover adobo and frying it until dry.

in Mindanao. Made with meat or fish, the shredded and dried flakes are used as a topping for 

Most home cooks still make adobo flakes when they need to clean out the fridge. But what if you wanted to make adobo flakes 

This recipe makes a simple chicken adobo destined for adobo flakes. Boneless thighs save you the trouble of picking out bones while flaking the meat. How you shred your chicken is up to you, whether it's long, meaty strands; short, almost ground-up floss; or something in between. Serve these crispy flakes with garlic rice for breakfast, over lugaw for texture, or with banana leaf-wrapped rice for homemade pastil.

Chicken Adobo

Adobo Sauce

Adobo Flakes

Boneless Chicken Adobo Flakes

Make crispy, flavor-packed flakes out of this quick and easy boneless chicken adobo.

On busy days, lunch can be as simple as tossing leftover rice with fluffy eggs. Just remember to cook your eggs first, rice second—throwing them together can result in mushy clumps of rice. You want each grain to be distinct and individually coated with a light slick of oil, not egg.

Serve this rice as a sidekick to your main dishes, or enjoy it solo as a cheap 10-minute meal. If you have leftover meat and vegetables in the fridge, this is the best way to use them up.

Scrambled Egg Fried Rice

Everyone's quick to think that you can never make paella without a paella pan. To some extent, that's true; authentic traditional paella 

 to be done in a paella pan. But it doesn't mean that you can't recreate the experience with a regular pan. This easy paella Valenciana recipe is proof. 

This recipe promises the same well-developed flavors in a regular paella Valenciana. Plus, it also comes with a range of textures—yes, including the toasted rice at the bottom. But the best part about it is that it all comes together in just one pan, and you can get it done in less than 30 minutes.

Stovetop Paella Valenciana

This easy paella valenciana recipe recreates the classic Spanish dish in 20 minutes—no paella pan required.

 And that’s not too inaccurate, since the two dishes do share one premise: braised pork in a flavorful, soy-based sauce. But lu rou fan’s biggest distinction from adobo is its chunky, saucy texture—it’s less of a stew and more like a minced meat sauce.

This adobo recipe follows the Taiwanese form by using hand-minced pork belly. This cooks much quicker than your standard-issue adobo cuts, and yields a tender, well-balanced bite of meat and fat. A cornstarch slurry creates a velvety sauce. If you have Chinese dark soy sauce on hand, a dash of it gives your adobo a richer color.

This adobo works wonderfully as a rice topping. Spoon over bowls of steaming hot rice, garnish with garlic chips, and prepare to come back for seconds.

Slurry

Minced Pork Adobo, Lu Rou Fan-Style

 deconstructs the sour stew and transforms it into a lively fried rice. You’ll find the usual sinigang ingredients here: thinly sliced pork belly, tomatoes, kangkong, sitaw. Instant sinigang mix ties everything together. We find that Maggi’s provides just the right level of sourness—bright and puckery, but not face-scrunchingly sour.

 you can add texture to your fried rice with crispy battered vegetables. We stick to kangkong and okra, but you can experiment with other veggies of choice, like 

Fried Rice

Crispy Vegetables (Optional)

Sinigang Fried Rice with Crispy Kangkong and Okra

Chicken biryani is everything we love about Indian cuisine—fluffy spiced rice, extra flavorful curried chicken, and lots and lots of aroma. It takes a bit of effort (and a lot of ingredients) to get the dish down. But the result is more than worth it, with flavor bomb after flavor bomb gracing your taste buds at every spoonful.

There are several variations of chicken biryani in the Indian subcontinent. This recipe follows the method of 

, which layers meat and par-boiled rice in a sealed pot cooked over low heat.

Fried Onions

Chicken

Rice

Assembly

Chicken Biryani with Yellow Basmati Rice

This chicken biryani recipe is a simplified version of Hyderabadi biryani, still complete with a mix of marinated meat and spiced rice.

It’s 2022, and the Korean food boom in Manila has not died down. Instead, it’s stronger than ever, and you can order everything from Korean fried chicken, to Korean hotdogs, to Korean barbeque everywhere. It’s invading our grocery shelves too, in the form of Highlands Gold Korean-Style BBQ Corned Beef. 

The flavor is one of two new delicious variants they’ve just released, including the spiced Black Pepper Corned Beef, and is bound to wind up in your grocery cart. To take it just a little bit further, we’ve made a corned beef bibimbap breakfast bowl with it that would be great for breakfast. 

Corned Beef

Bibimbap Sauce

Mung Bean Sprouts

Assembly 

Corned Beef Bibimbap Breakfast Bowl

Make breakfast more exciting with a corned beef bibimbap bowl. All you need is rice, veggies, and Highlands Gold Korean-Style BBQ Corned Beef.

Total Time

Shakshuka is a hearty Middle Eastern and North African breakfast of eggs poached in a tomato and bell pepper sauce. Traditionally, it's served straight from the skillet with pita bread.

This recipe adds rice (how Asian of us!), which soaks up the shakshuka sauce. Cooking it low and slow makes sure that every bit of rice is perfectly cooked and coated in the sauce. It's a crispy bottom away from becoming a vegetarian paella. Add color and flavor with crumbled feta, chili flakes, and fresh greens like spinach or cilantro.

Shakshuka Skillet Rice with Feta Cheese

 shares a cheat recipe that delivers all that’s good in Hainanese chicken rice in a Japanese donburi (rice bowl) format. This comfort dish combines crispy chicken thighs, fragrant pandan rice, and sweet-tangy Hainanese chicken-inspired sauce.

Hainanese Chicken Rice Don

This easy chicken rice don comes with crispy, tender izakaya-style chicken thighs, fragrant Hainanese chicken rice, and a 3-in-1 sauce.

 for breakfast. First, he scoops freshly cooked rice into a stainless steel bowl. Then goes the toppings, piled over the rice: 

 tuna straight out of the can. Lastly, a fried egg with a jiggly yolk to finish. He tries to slide it out of the pan to complete the picture-perfect bowl, but the egg lands yolk-first with a sad plop.

 with a runny sunny-side-up, but go fry up a crispy-edged egg if you prefer some texture. The kimchi and anchovies can be bought from a Korean grocery store. The 

 or pickled onions, are simple enough to make at home—we used 

Ingredients

Jin’s Breakfast Tuna Bibimbap

Making authentic Hainanese chicken rice is not something you can casually do on a weeknight, but this recipe does it in less time and little effort, making it a great option for a weeknight dinner! 

This one-pot Hainanese chicken rice recipe is not traditional. But what it 

 is an easy way to get all the delicious, familiar flavors of Hainanese chicken rice in a short amount of time, all done in one pot.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Garnish

One-Pot Hainanese Chicken Rice

This one-pot Hainanese chicken rice recipe gets you the delicious, familiar flavors of the classic dish with less time and little effort!

It’s no secret that this dish is one of Metro Manila’s most raved-about dishes, of Instagrammable proportions—Your Local’s Salmon Donburi has built a cult following for itself since it first opened its doors. Tons of people take a trip to the hipster Asian joint in Legazpi Village for a hefty bowl of black rice and torched, mentaiko-laden, tobiko-sprinkled salmon. This recipe hack is as close to the real thing as you can get at home.

Shiitake Rice

Mentaiko Aioli

Torched Salmon

For Assembly

Your Local-Inspired Salmon Bowl with Mushroom Rice

Your Local's Salmon Donburi is a hefty feast on a bowl that's worth having a taste when you visit Legazpi Village, or when you make it at home!

Ate Rica’s famous bacsilog is not about the bacon nor the egg—it’s their signature cheese sauce that transforms it into the rice bowl we know and love. Smooth and milky, it ties the whole dish together with a cheesy, lip-smacking quality. Without it, you’re just eating plain old bacon and rice.

Because the sauce makes the dish, we wanted a milkier version of the real thing. Nestlé Carnation Evap makes this bacsilog cheese sauce silkier, creamier, and irresistible thanks to its milky-namnam flavor. Each milk carton (P20) conveniently amounts to 1 cup, making it easy to double this recipe. And trust us, you want to make extra sauce.

Cheese Sauce

Bacsilog

Bacsilog with Extra Milky Cheese Sauce, Ate Rica's-Style

This bacsilog recipe replicates all of your favorite parts from Ate Rica's special: creamy cheese sauce, fried egg, and bacon.

This Pinoy Shawarma Recipe combines the Middle Eastern influences of shawarma with the preferences of the Filipino. This dish lets you enjoy a balanced mix of shawarma rice cooked in margarine, cucumber salad, and garlic yogurt sauce according to your liking. In just 30 minutes, you can have enough for the family or for an entire week’s worth of packed lunch.

Beef Tapa

Shawarma Rice

Cucumber Salad

Garlic Yogurt Sauce

Pinoy Shawarma Rice

Spam and kimchi fried rice is a back pocket recipe for long work days or late-night Korean food cravings. Toss leftover rice with salty Spam, tangy kimchi, and spicy-sweet gochujang sauce for a comforting, flavor-packed meal. Easy to make, hard to mess up, always delicious.

Gochujang Sauce

Spam Kimchi Fried Rice

 but rice? And just like that, this recipe was born.

Instead of a rich shrimp gravy over pancit bihon, toss leftover rice in aligue, salted egg, and tons of seafood. A dash of annatto powder gives it that palabok-orange color. For a bit of crunch, garnish with crushed chicharon.

Palabok Fried Rice

This recipe takes cues from pancit palabok, making a seafood-loaded fried rice from crab fat, shrimp, squid, and salted egg.

This quick and simple fried rice gets its flavor from salted egg (itlog na maalat). Feel free to adapt this recipe with whatever you have on hand—fried rice is excellent for using up leftovers. Replace the pork with your favorite protein (we recommend shrimp), or throw in any extra vegetables lurking in your fridge.

Salted Egg Fried Rice with Pork or Shrimp

This fried rice recipe gets its flavor from salted egg (itlog na maalat). Toss in some pork and vegetables for an easy weeknight meal.

This Thai-inspired rice bowl gets most of its flavor from the bagoong. Use the best or your favorite brand. The sweet pork cooks easily, but can be switched out for any leftover meat you have in your fridge.

Julienned green mangoes provide a refreshing tanginess that cuts through the salty shrimp paste. You want to get a mango that isn't too raw or too ripe, since raw green mangoes are as tough as twigs and the overripe ones are too mushy.

Sweet Pork

Bagoong Rice

Bagoong Rice Bowl with Pork & Green Mango

This bagoong rice recipe is a playground of Thai flavor thanks to salty shrimp paste, sweet pork, spicy chilies, and green mango.

This is not a food hack of Jollibee’s Honey Beef Rice. If we wanted to be accurate, we’d cut costs too and serve a pinch of beef over a bowl of hot rice. So we took what we loved about the original and made a superior knockoff.

If you've never had it, Honey Beef Rice tastes like a sweeter 

. This recipe yields a honey sauce that's much thicker than Jollibee's, clinging to the beef and onions. Using actual honey gives it a complex, floral sweetness.

Honey Sauce

Beef

Make the Honey Sauce

Prepare the Beef

Jollibee-Inspired Honey Beef Rice

When will Jollibee bring back their Honey Beef Rice? Don't wait another 20 years. Make this recipe for superior, sticky-sweet honey beef rice.

Adobo fans will adore lu rou fan, or Taiwanese braised pork over rice. The classic comfort food consists of pork belly braised in a fragrant, soy-based gravy until rich and chunky, almost like an Asian meat sauce. The flavor profile bears similarities to Filipino adobo: garlicky, a bit sweet, the tang of vinegar replaced by heady five spice.

Some versions of lu rou fan call for ground pork, but we prefer pork belly for its fat content. The fat renders out during the braise, creating a sticky, lip-smacking texture in the final sauce. To achieve thin slices, par-freeze your pork belly until firm but not frozen solid. This gives you a safer, more solid base to work with.

Taiwanese Braised Pork Bowl (Lu Rou Fan)

Lu rou fan is classic Taiwanese comfort food comprised of slow-braised pork belly in a glossy, sweet-savory gravy spooned over rice.

Ask where to get the best steak in Manila and Mamou is bound to appear at the top of your list. The restaurant styles itself less as a steakhouse and more as a home kitchen, with a menu that runs the gamut from fancy, dry-aged steak to their humble steak rice.

If you have any leftover steak lying around for whatever reason, revive it with hot butter, cooked rice, and a splash of Knorr seasoning. If Mamou's not above it, neither are you.

Mamou-Inspired Buttery Steak Rice

Have leftover steak? Turn it into steak rice a la Mamou.

Think of chirashi sushi (which conveniently means "scattered sushi") as a deconstructed sushi: raw fish slices and colorful toppings on a bed of vinegared sushi rice. It's an easy way to enjoy sushi at home without the labor of rolling and slicing.

This recipe uses tuna and salmon sashimi, but feel free to add or sub any raw fish of your choosing. Make sure to get your fish from a reputable brand or source, and sushi-grade if possible. The sushi rice requires some attention that might tempt you to use regular cooked rice instead. Don't skip it—you'll lose the sweet, tart flavor that complements the raw fish.

Tamago

Sushi Rice (Su-meshi)

Make Tamago

Make Sushi Rice

Assemble the Chirashi Bowl

Chirashi Sushi Bowl

Want sushi without the trouble of shaping and rolling? Make this colorful and sashimi-heavy chirashi bowl.

. You're supposed to eat it alone to enjoy the purity of the fish mingling with the juices it's made with. So, to some, this kinilaw poke bowl might not make any sense. But we'll bet that for a subset of people who have no problem eating their 

 or salpicao with rice, this appetizer-turned-rice bowl is just the combo they need to enjoy kinilaw.

Coconut Rice

Kinilaw na Isda

Kinilaw na Isda Poke Bowl with Coconut Rice

Turn Filipino ceviche—or kinilaw—into a rice bowl. It combines raw tanigue with fresh elements, topping it on coconut rice.

We’re often used to eating rice to accompany flavorful dishes, but there’s no reason why it can’t be a dish on its own. Paella is proof that with the right ingredients–especially the right rice–you can get a delicious, complex dish that only requires one pan. This recipe is our Asian take on the staple that requires long grains to absorb all that flavor.

 to create this one-pan wonder, which combines the qualities of Hong Kong soy sauce roasts and crispy five-spice chicken.

Their Jasmine White Rice has a natural fragrance that accentuates the five spice, and also cooks well using this method. Toasting it first brings out the nuttiness, then cooking it with the broth and chicken makes sure that the aromatics are present in every grain.

After only 45 minutes, the result is tender, fluffy, soy-sauce laced rice with crispy soccarat or tutong at the bottom—a perfect midweek meal. We were introduced to a whole new eating experience with SunRice Jasmine Rice. Its long grains separate easily, gives a slight chewy yet fluffy texture, and has the soft notes of pandan fragrance that make it simply appetizing. The rice really took center stage in this recipe!

It was not surprising to find out from our partners that SunRice is the number one rice brand in Australia (where the brand is from) and many other countries. They have recently launched on our shores with both the Jasmine rice and another short grain variety called Hinata rice which is more suitable for Japanese or Chinese dishes with its rounder grains and stickier texture.

SunRice products are available at selected SM Supermarkets and Hypermarkets with an ongoing campaign as SM celebrates its Super Month! You can also get SunRice on

One-Pan Five Spice Chicken Rice

One would think it's hard to hack Pepper Lunch's Beef Pepper Rice, but it surprisingly isn't. Contrary to popular belief, the secret isn't in the butter—it's in the beef itself. Good quality, well-prepared beef gives this dish a stellar spot on Filipino's most sought-after lunch meals on their list. 

One does not simply stake their reputation on a sizzling plate of beef. But for Pepper Lunch's Beef Pepper Rice, we will. Besides having it better and bigger, you won’t have to smell like a lunchtime promo after you’ve had your mid-day fix.

Garlic Soy Sauce

Pepper Lunch Beef Pepper Rice

In times like these, it's handy to keep recipes for canned goods in your pocket. We've partnered with CDO Karne Norte to give you three Filipino favorite dishes that you can easily use Karne Norte in, and have it for more than just breakfast.

Everybody has their own distinct way of cooking chili con carne, so why not try making it your own with Karne Norte? Mix your favorite type of beans, whether garbanzo or kidney, to add a distinct crunch to the dish. The flavorful aromas of CDO Karne Norte really come out in this recipe.

If you want to make these recipes at home, order through 

Chili con CDO Carne Norte

In times like these, it’s handy to keep recipes for canned goods in your pocket. We’ve partnered with CDO Karne Norte to give you three Filipino favorite dishes that you can easily use Karne Norte in, and have it for more than just breakfast.

A classic Filipino way of cooking corned beef, this hash recipe extends your can by adding potatoes, which you can easily find in the supermarket. This way of cooking the beef also highlights the distinct guisado flavor of CDO Karne Norte, making it incredibly comforting.

CDO Karne Norte and Potato Hash

This quick and easy hash recipe beefs up your CDO Karne Norte with cubed potatoes, to enjoy with steamed rice or toasted pandesal.