Fair or not, I judge most Chinese restaurants by their fried rice. Why fried rice? Because good fried rice is simple and pure, with very few ingredients. To make the best restaurant-quality rice, you need high-quality ingredients and you need to take care to cook them correctly. If the kitchen takes time to cook rice well, chances are good that everything will be great.

Serve the wild turkey fried rice as a side or as a main dish.

To get top-notch, restaurant-quality results from fried rice at home, start with the right rice. Starch means sticky rice and sticky rice doesn’t fry well. Medium-grain, low-starch rice is best. I use Jasmin-Thai-style rice. To remove even more starch, I like to line a colander with cheese cloth and rinse the rice well before cooking.

Rinse the medium-grain rice under running water before cooking to remove as much starch as possible.

To get the best browning on your rice grains, the surface needs to be dry when it hits the hot wok. After it comes out of the pan or rice cooker, spread the rice on a platter and fluff it well to let the surface dry out a bit before adding it to the wok.

When it comes to cooking, a wok over high heat makes the best fried rice. We use our Lodge Cast-Iron wok over an outdoor gas burner to get near commercial kitchen heat. Use an oil with a high smoke point, like peanut or palm oil to handle the heat without breaking down. Stir frying in a hot wok moves at a  quick pace, so have all of your ingredients ready to go in before you start cooking.

Stir frying goes quickly so have all ingredients ready to add to the wok.