I love this pineapple rice.
It’s an easy fried rice recipe, with several savory ingredients like garlic, soy sauce and fish sauce, vegetables, onions and spring onions.
One of the things that separates this recipe from the rest of the fried rice recipes around is the addition of sweet pineapple. You can use either fresh or canned pineapple.
I think fresh tastes much better, but that said, if canned is all you have, don’t let that stop you from making this wonderful fried rice.
Fried rice is really quite simple to make. I’ve given you a few tips below to make a perfect pineapple rice recipe.
This is a Thai fried rice recipe that uses Thai fish sauce in addition to soy sauce for flavoring.
Thai recipes often add sugar where we wouldn’t necessarily. I recommend that the sugar is optional. It will taste great for sure if you use the sugar, but it will still taste fantastic without it.
The choice is yours. I personally leave it out.
You can serve this pineapple rice with so many things. It’s perfect as a side dish with other Asian flavored dishes of course but it’s a very versatile too. Serve it with chicken, beef or pork or serve it alongside other vegetarian dishes for a full vegetarian meal.
If you want an Asian themed dinner how about serving this pineapple rice with Thai flavored chicken, chicken lettuce wraps or oven steamed salmon with chili and ginger.
Any of these combinations would make an amazing meal filled with tasty Asian flavors.
Whatever you choose, making this pineapple rice recipe is a good place to start to create your meal.
Pineapple Rice Tips
1. The Rice
Fried rice should be so easy to make but for the longest time, I could never get it right. Then I realized my big mistake. I was using the wrong rice.
I always used plain white rice for my fried rice and what I found was that it just stuck together and didn’t fry up nicely. Even if I cooked it the day before and refrigerated it as many people recommend, it just didn’t work well for me.
Then one day I tried it with basmati rice. Amazing – it worked wonderfully.
Basmati rice is a great rice to work with. It cooks up quickly and never sticks together or clumps like plain white rice can.
Now I find that if I cook the rice a bit ahead of time and really let it cool down before using it, it works perfectly each and every time.
Basmati rice has become my staple, “go to” rice. It does have a bit of a different flavor than plain white rice though, so for certain things I go back to the plain white rice.
If I am making rice for an Italian dinner for example, I won’t use basmati, because the flavors don’t mesh well, but most of the time, I stick with basmati.
2. The Pineapple
The recipe calls for 4 ounces of pineapple. Do you have to have fresh pineapple on hand? No, not really. You can use drained canned pineapple and it will be just fine.
I love fresh pineapple though so I love to make it with that.
Plus you get to use the scooped out pineapple as your serving dish. I love it.
3. The Vegetables
The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of vegetables. I like to use a mix of veggies, like carrots and corn, with some peas or finely chopped green beans. They all add wonderful color to the pineapple fried rice and taste great with the pineapple.
You can use whatever vegetables you prefer and think will work nicely in this fried rice recipe.
If you are using fresh vegetables you need to partially cook them before stir frying them with the rice. The vegetables should be fairly finely chopped, so you don’t need to cook them for long. I would say cook them about 1/2 way.
If you are using frozen vegetables, you don’t really need to precook them. I would just add them near the end of the cooking time for the garlic. That’s enough time to soften them up and make sure they are cooked enough with the rice.
When seasoning your fried rice with salt and pepper at the end, remember that both the soy sauce and fish sauce are salty. I recommend going a bit light on the salt before you taste it.
This recipe is gluten free, but it you really need it to be completely gluten free, please make sure your soy sauce is a gluten free brand.
This recipe serves 4, but it can very easily be multiplied to serve more. Just double up on everything.
I hope you enjoy it. Let me know how it worked for you in the comments section below the recipe.
Pineapple Rice
Ingredients
- 1 cup basmati rice
- 1 onion, small, chopped
- 2 red chilies, large, optional
- 4 spring onions, chopped
- 4 ounces pineapple, chopped
- 1/2 cup vegetables, (a mixture of peas, carrots, corn or green beans)
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sugar, optional
- salt and pepper to your taste
Instructions
- Cook rice in boiling salted water for 10 minutes. Rinse well and then drain it well. Set the rice aside to cool.
- While the rice is cooking, chop the onion, chilies (discarding seeds), spring onions, vegetables and pineapple. Set them aside.
- Partially cook the vegetables if you are using fresh.
- Heat the oil in a large nonstick frying pan. Fry the garlic and onions for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the vegetables, chilies and spring onions, then add the cooked rice, fish, soy sauce and sugar.
- Cook, stirring for about five minutes or until the mixture is piping hot. Stir in the pineapple. Cook for another minute.
- Season with salt and pepper and serve.
- Serves 4 to 6.
Nutrition
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