As I'm sure you could probably imagine, pretty much all throughout China you can find a bunch of riffs on the theme of a "Lao Gan Ma Fried Rice"… I mean, there probably's a non-zero chance that you might already have your own.
So… this right here is our recreation – and slight interpretation – of that Lao Gan Ma fried rice in Guizhou.
But before anything, we do have to be clear I guess about one thing: which's… which Lao Gan Ma.
Because there's obviously more than a few different bottles out there, but probably the most common is what we lovingly refer to as "the big three": Lao Gan Ma Chili Oil with Black Bean, which's actually the original Lao Gan Ma in China… Fried Chili in Oil, which's a sort of Guizhou style youlajiao chili oil… and of course Spicy Chili Crisp, the international favorite.
Speaking in the broadest generalities, in our personal opinion, this one tends to work best as a chili oil, this one the best as a condiment, and this the best as an ingredient.
So… that's what we'll be using today.
Then.
Besides that, as I said before, that shop in Xingyi starts their fried rice with smoked Chinese bacon – larou – and fries that in lard to get a bit of a base.
For ease of international replication though, today we decided to go off a base of bacon – like, American style streaky bacon – instead, cut into one centimeter strips, and we'll be rendering out the grease a bit later to use as the lard.
Now, for our rice.
