Is healthy fried rice an oxymoron? I was thinking of starting to cook fried brown rice with eggs and vegetables. Has anyone make this or have suggestions?

Well I make mine with cauliflower rice. I like it and so does my family. Brown rice is a good choice too, but I like to use the cauliflower because less carbs, and more veggies.

I'm quite carb-sensitive, and can overeat and gain weight on even the highest fiber carbs. That's why I use a low-carb exchange plan.

Fried rice is a favorite, so I also use grated cauliflower for some or all of the rice, and often use brown rice or even other higher grains (trying to choose the grains highest in fiber and/or protein).

love making fried rice with my husband's grain and rice pilaf recipe (he makes an awesome grain blend that uses several varieties of rice, wild rice, quinoa, amaranth, and millet).

My exchange plan allows two to three starch exchanges per day, so I can eat fried rice, I just have to account for it. I use the grated cauliflower to add volume (Two starch exchanges is only 1/2 cup of rice).

I make brown rice and freeze portions of either 1/4 cup or 1/2 cup and use that in my fried rice. (Amount depends on what else I've eaten that day). My bowl is mostly veggies so I don't need much rice, but it adds texture and helps fill me up.

I also use a good nonstick skillet and usually stir fry in a tiny bit of water or veg broth. If I need oil, I measure it as well.

I had never heard of grating cauliflower or freezing rice!!! This is great!! I'm going to try this because I need to stop my addiction to Panda Express.

Where do you find cauliflower rice?

You make it. There are several recipes online. It's just grated or chopped cauliflower. You can use a grater on raw cauliflower (cooked will just crumble messily). On raw or cooked, you can use either a knife, or a food processor; and on cooked cauliflower, you can also use a potato ricer.


For fried rice, I use a grater, and I grate it raw and just dump it in with the other veggies I'm sauteeing, then add the cooked rice or grains.

Do you use it instead of rice, or as a partial replacement for rice in a recipe?

Thank you for taking the time to answer

No problem, actually you can do either, it depends on your carb tolerance, preference, and the plan you're following (for example, someone on Atkins Induction would use cauliflower "rice" as a rice replacement).

Someone who isn't on a low-carb plan (or on a less strict low-carb plan, such as the reduced-carb exchange plan I follow) may use it as a partial replacement and may combine it with real rice or other grains.

I've done both. My plan allows for a minimum of 2 starch exchanges (my average is usually 3 to 4, because I spend some of my optional calories on carbs).

For me, it depends on how I want to budget my starch calories. If I've already "spent" my 3 to 4 starch exchanges, I'll use cauliflower in place of all the rice. If I still have room in my "budget" I may spend some of it on "real" rice and just use the cauliflower rice to "extend" the rice.

It also depends on who I'm feeding. I like cauliflower rice just fine in place of rice. I also like mashed cauliflower in place of mashed potato. However, my husband doesn't. However, if I mix just a little bit of the "real thing" in a recipe, he likes it just fine.

So he doesn't care for my mashed cauliflower, unless there's a little bit of mashed potato in there. For a 2.5 lb head of cauliflower, I usually use only one or two "exchange" servings of mashed potato flakes (I use the nutrition label to determine how much that is - 80 calories of potato flakes = 1 starch serving.). Since it makes a HUGE batch, it only comes to like 10 calories more than the mashed cauliflower alone (so I usually don't even have to count it as a bread serving, because the carb count is so low).

When I make fried rice for myself, I'm find with just cauliflower rice, but my husband doesn't care for it as much unless there's real rice in there. I also replace some of the rice with wild rice, because wild rice is higher in fiber and protein, and lower in carb than true rice. (It pays to buy a really good wild rice. I never liked wild rice vert much until I was given real wild rice as a wedding gift from my MIL's sister and husband (the rice was harvested by the traditional method by the husband who is native american, Menominee).

Natural, truly wild rice (as opposed to cultivated wild rice) has a much richer flavor, and a more tender texture than cultivated wild rice. And if it's harvested by hand, the grains don't get broken, so the texture is much better..

There are some good cultivated wild rices, and I will buy them occasionally, but I've been spoiled on the good stuff, and will spend more to buy the best wild rice I can.