How To Elevate Homemade Chicken Fried Rice With A Single Seasoning

There's a secret to mouth-watering chicken fried rice, a little trick to making the fresh ingredients and comfort food feel of the dish even more irresistible. It's not just the umami flavors that come from salty soy sauce and pungent fish sauce or the juicy roasted chicken, fried egg, and little vegetable nuggets. The "wow factor" doesn't come from delicately sliced green onions or shredded ginger, basil, or even mint and brown sugar. The way to give your homemade chicken fried rice something a little special is to use a single seasoning with a lot of flavor: Chinese five-spice powder.

Chinese five-spice powder is a blend of star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, cloves, fennel seed, and cinnamon that elevates chicken fried rice — and a whole lot more. Use Chinese five-spice seasoning in dishes like crispy Thai basil beef or as a secret ingredient in crispy coconut baked chicken. It's great in soups, as a meat marinade, and in salad dressing. It's an all-purpose seasoning that brings food to life by touching on all five tastes: Salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami (savory).

Homemade chicken fried rice seasoned with Chinese five-spice powder really has it all. It has every flavor the tongue can recognize in one dish. While the Chinese five-spice powder contains all five tastes, the chicken fried rice doubles down on umami. It will contain the rest of the five tastes as well, depending on what else is in the dish. Using leftovers is common when making chicken fried rice, and the dish takes on whatever strongest flavors are added. Those flavors are all amplified by the seasoning.

Sitting down to a plate of Chinese five-spice seasoned chicken fried rice will be even better with a good cocktail — and if you're looking for one that incorporates the seasoning, you're in luck. Meet the Chinese 5-spiced Dark N' Stormy, made with Chinese five-spice-infused rum. The infused rum is easy to make at home: Add 1 teaspoon of Chinese five-spice seasoning to a bottle of your favorite dark rum. Let it sit overnight, strain, and then add it to ginger beer (Fever Tree ginger beer works great!) with a squeeze of lime. You can also add Chinese five-spice powder to any of The Best Rum Cocktails To Enjoy During The Colder Months, featuring warm flavor profiles that combine with the seasoning to make the cocktail really sing.