Fried Rice and Tofu Egg Drop Soup

We're still a good looooong way from hitting Asia on our culinary world tour, but we also like to change up our weekly meal plans with cuisine from different parts of the world on a fairly regular basis. Recently we've been making Chinese classics or dishes inspired by Asian cooking, including an awesome meal consisting of egg drop soup and fried rice.

This one starts out by cooking up a few cups of white rice, which are allowed to cool and actually put into the fridge so they become more firm and dry, which helps while "frying" the rice later. Along with our cooked and cooling rice, we've got diced extra firm tofu, carrots, and green onions.

There will also be roma tomato in our soup, and this time we're going to actually peel it ahead of time, which is something we don't normally bother with. To easily peel a tomato, boil it in water for a few minutes and then remove from the pot with tongs. Slide your fingernail or the edge of a knife underneath the skin and it should slide right off.

After being peeled, the tomato is diced up along with the rest of the vegetables.

For our fried rice we weren't going to use any meat, so instead we added in eggs. Here Megan is gently folding eggs on a hot skillet to get what is essentially scrambled eggs without any of the milk or cheese. After the eggs are at the scrambled consistency they are removed from the heat and set with the other ingredients to be added to the rice later.

To get the fried rice started we begin cooking the carrots in a skillet coated with a few teaspoons of oil.

Next the cooled rice is thrown in with the carrots.

The rice and carrots are then joined by those beautiful green onions and stirred up.

Finally the scrambled eggs are tossed in as well.

The rice is nearing completion after sprinkling in some chives and seasonings. Meanwhile though, we've been starting the soup...

...here we're boiling the base, which was water with Swanson chicken flavor boost and green onions. You could also do your own homemade stock however if you have some handy (check out our guide to making stock right here). To thicken this up, throw in a bit of corn starch, and we recommend seasoning with ginger.

For the "egg drop" part of the soup, whisk together a few eggs in a bowl. Dredge a fork into the eggs and then twirl the fork over the boiling stock so that long, thin strings of egg flow down.

The egg will begin to solidify quickly in the boiling stock and create that iconic consistency of egg drop soup.

To make our soup more exciting, we're throwing in diced tomato and tofu to compliment the eggs.

Here's our soup nearing completion with all the ingredients added in.

The delicious fried rice is spooned out first on a plate...

...and then we ladle the egg drop soup into a bowl.

Have some spicy scriracha sauce on hand and you've got an excellent, filling meal that also happens to be meatless (you could of course also do beef, pork, or shrimp in either the rice or soup).

Thanks for checking in, and see you again soon as we return to our culinary world tour, create more interesting meals with beans and pasta, and continue our obsession with one-pot dinners!