P.F. Chang’s Fried Rice (Actual Restaurant Recipe)
P.F. Chang’s fried rice gets most of its flavor from a sauce that doesn’t appear in any of the online recipes I’ve seen. I tracked down the exact ingredients and…
P.F. Chang’s fried rice gets most of its flavor from a sauce that doesn’t appear in any of the online recipes I’ve seen. I tracked down the exact ingredients and techniques P.F. Chang’s uses and put together the complete recipe for every variation on their menu: chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, and vegetarian.
P.F. Chang’s makes a base sauce from chicken broth, sugar, soy sauce, mushroom dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, and rice wine, and they use it on roughly half the dishes on their menu, including their P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef. Once you have a batch of this in your fridge, the fried rice itself comes together in about three minutes. The other thing most home cooks overlook is how P.F. Chang’s prepares their proteins: every meat gets soaked in an alkaline soy marinade for up to 24 hours, then par-cooked using the Chinese technique of passing through the oil before the final stir-fry.
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Long-grain white rice. P.F. Chang’s uses long-grain white rice, the same type I use in my Chinese Takeout Fried Rice. I spoke with people at several P.F. Chang’s locations and the only brand mentioned more than once was Riceland. Any American long-grain white rice will work, though.
Lee Kum Kee Low Sodium Soy Sauce. P.F. Chang’s currently uses the green bottle. This is used in both the alkaline marinade and the dark sauce. If you can’t find the low sodium version, regular Lee Kum Kee or Kikkoman will work.
Lee Kum Kee Mushroom Dark Soy Sauce. This is added for color more than flavor. Regular dark soy sauce will work, but the mushroom version adds more savoriness. You can find it at most Asian grocery stores.
Lee Kum Kee Panda Brand Oyster Sauce. P.F. Chang’s uses this version, the one in the green bottle with no added MSG, at the restaurant. All of Lee Kum Kee’s oyster sauces are good, but if you can find their premium oyster sauce, the one with the bucolic scene of a mother and son harvesting gigantic oysters on the label, that’s the one I’d go with.
Minor’s Original Chicken Base. P.F. Chang’s uses this paste for the chicken broth in their dark sauce. If you can’t find Minor’s, both Knorr and Lee Kum Kee Asian-style chicken bouillon powder will also work.
Michiu rice cooking wine. This is a Taiwanese-style rice wine that’s very popular in Cantonese and Taiwanese kitchens. It’s similar to the more common Shaoxing wine, and while there are subtle flavor differences, they’re interchangeable for this recipe.
Baking soda. A small amount dissolved in water creates the alkaline environment for the protein marinade. The raised pH prevents proteins from tightening during high-heat cooking. If you’ve tried adding baking soda directly to meat and noticed an off-flavor, this brine method gives you the tenderizing effect without affecting the taste.
This recipe has a few components that you’ll want to prepare ahead of time. The dark sauce and alkaline soy marinade can both be made in advance and stored. The proteins need at least 2 hours in the marinade (P.F. Chang’s does 24 hours), and they get deep-fried before the fried rice is assembled. Once everything is prepped, the actual stir-fry comes together in about 2-3 minutes.
Make the alkaline soy marinade. Add 1 cup of water to a large bowl, whisk in ½ teaspoon of baking soda until dissolved, then add ⅓ cup of soy sauce. You can store this covered in the fridge indefinitely.
Prep your protein. For chicken, beef, or pork, slice the meat into thin strips about ⅛ inch thick, cutting against the grain. For flank steak specifically, cut 1-inch strips with the grain first, then turn each strip perpendicular and slice across the grain at about a 30-40 degree angle. If you’re having trouble getting thin slices, put the meat in the freezer for 20-30 minutes to firm it up. Soak the sliced meat in the alkaline soy marinade for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours, refrigerated the entire time. For shrimp, pour the marinade over frozen peeled and deveined shrimp (41-50 count) and let them thaw in it, which takes about 30 minutes.
Cook the protein. For chicken, beef, or pork: remove the meat from the marinade and pat it dry with paper towels. Heat neutral oil to 350°F and deep-fry in small batches for about 2 minutes, agitating so the pieces don’t clump together. You’ll know it’s ready when you see the edges start to brown. Remove to a paper towel-lined baking sheet. For shrimp: remove from the marinade, pat dry, then simmer in water (not deep-fry) for 1-2 minutes until cooked through. Let cool on paper towels. Cooked proteins can be stored in a covered container in the fridge for 2-3 days.
Make the dark sauce. Add ¼ cup of water and ½ teaspoon of chicken bouillon powder (or Minor’s chicken base) to a small pot along with ¼ cup of sugar. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and whisk until the sugar and bouillon have dissolved. Kill the heat and add ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of mushroom dark soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce, and 2 tablespoons of Michiu or Shaoxing wine. Whisk until combined. This stores in a covered container in the fridge for about a month.
Cook the fried rice. Heat neutral oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Crack in 1 egg and let the whites set around the edges, then stir until the egg is almost cooked through. Add 6 ounces of your prepared protein and stir until it’s up to temp. If you’re making a combination fried rice with all the meats, use about 2.5 ounces of each instead. Toss in 16 ounces of cooked rice and press it down with the back of your spatula, breaking up any large chunks while mixing in the egg and protein. Add ½ cup of bean sprouts, ½ cup of julienned carrots, and ⅓ cup of sliced green onions. Stir until the vegetables start to soften. Add ¼ teaspoon of white pepper and stir it in, then pour ¼ cup of the dark sauce around the edges of the wok. This lets the sauce hit the hot metal first, which caramelizes it slightly and gives the rice a toasty flavor. Work the sauce into the rice until you see no white chunks left, then kill the heat and adjust the final seasoning with salt.
For the vegetarian version: Follow the same process, but replace the protein and egg with rehydrated dried shiitake mushrooms (steep in boiling water for 30 minutes, then drain and slice), blanched broccoli florets, and snap peas (blanch both in boiling water for about 1 minute). For the dark sauce, swap the chicken bouillon for a vegetarian mushroom bouillon and use a vegetarian oyster sauce, which is typically mushroom-based. You can find both at most Asian grocery stores.
Cool your rice before stir-frying. If you’re using a rice cooker, you can use rice straight from the cooker, but let it cool to room temperature first. Hot rice releases steam into the wok and makes the finished fried rice mushy. If you’re cooking on the stovetop, spread the rice on a baking sheet after cooking, let it cool completely, then cover and refrigerate overnight. Either method works.
Pat your proteins dry after marinating. Excess marinade on the surface of the meat will cause the oil to splatter during deep-frying. A few pats with paper towels before frying makes a real difference.
Work in small batches when deep-frying. Adding too much meat to the oil at once drops the temperature, so the meat takes longer to cook and absorbs more oil. Small batches keep the oil at 350°F and cook more evenly.
Pour the dark sauce around the edges, not on top. Pouring the sauce along the rim of the wok lets it hit the hot metal and caramelize slightly before it mixes into the rice. You get a toasty flavor that you won’t get from pouring it straight onto the rice.
Adjust the salt at the end. The dark sauce already has soy sauce, oyster sauce, and chicken broth in it, all of which are salty. But you’ll almost always need about a teaspoon of extra salt to get the seasoning right.
Fried rice keeps well in a covered container in the fridge for 3-4 days. The best reheating method is a hot wok or skillet with a small splash of oil. Microwave works in a pinch, but the texture won’t be the same. The dark sauce stores in the fridge for about a month, and the alkaline soy marinade keeps in the fridge indefinitely.
You can, but you don’t need to. Most Chinese restaurants, P.F. Chang’s included, use fresh rice straight from the cooker. The important thing is letting the rice cool to room temperature before you stir-fry it. Day-old rice from the fridge works fine and some people prefer it because it’s a bit drier, but it’s not a requirement.
The dark sauce is a blend of chicken broth, sugar, soy sauce, mushroom dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, and rice wine. It gives you the seasoning, color, and sweetness in a single sauce. Straight soy sauce alone would only give you salt and color, and the finished rice would taste one-dimensional.
You can stir-fry the marinated meat in a hot wok instead, but the texture will be different. Deep-frying at 350°F gives you lightly browned edges and the meat will cook more evenly. If you stir-fry, make sure the wok is very hot and work in small batches so the meat sears instead of steaming.
Shaoxing cooking wine is the closest substitute and is more widely available. The flavor differences between the two are subtle, and you won’t notice them in the finished dark sauce.
The standard recipe uses soy sauce and oyster sauce, both of which typically contain wheat. P.F. Chang’s does use the Panda Brand oyster sauce (green bottle), which is their gluten-free version, but the soy sauce still contains wheat. For a fully gluten-free version, you would need to use tamari instead of soy sauce.
