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Fried Wild Rice

A stir‑fried dish of cooked wild rice with sunflower oil, wild ginger, wild garlic, ramps, sweet corn, dried cranberries, soy sauce, salt, and pepper.

By Health Canada · From Canada's Food Guide · 9 ingredients
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Fried Wild Rice

Why it works: Wild rice and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fried Wild Rice

Serves 4
Timeabout 40 minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Bring 1 L (4 cups) of water to a boil in a medium-sized pot.

  2. Add dry wild rice and simmer for about 40 minutes, or until the rice just starts to open and is chewy.

  3. Remove from heat, strain in a fine-mesh sieve, and run under cold water to stop the cooking process.

Fry and finish

  1. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.

  2. Add sunflower oil, wild ginger, wild garlic, and ramps, and sauté for 2 minutes.

  3. Add sweet corn kernels and dried cranberries, and sauté for another minute.

  4. Mix in the cooked wild rice.

  5. Add soy sauce and toss.

  6. Scrape the bottom of the pan to mix up all the tasty bits.

  7. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

326Calories
11 gProtein
2 gFat
72 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 9 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Wild Rice1 cup cooked (164g)166
Corn1/2 cup kernels (82g)77
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Soy Sauce1 tbsp (15ml)9
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Garlic1 clove (3g)4
Ginger1 tsp grated fresh (2g)2
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Sunflower Oilnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Health Canada. Recipe from Canada's Food Guide.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Wild rice + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Wild rice + sunflowertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sunflower + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together337 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wild rice
Forms the chewy, firm bulk of the dish once cooked and fried.
Sunflower oil
Conducts heat in the skillet and carries the aromatics, helping them sauté evenly.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury flavour and colour as it toss-cooks onto the rice.
Dried cranberries
Add sweetness and a chewy, tart contrast to the savoury rice.
Sweet corn kernels
Add sweetness and a tender, juicy bite to the fried mixture.

The step that matters

Cooling the rice after simmering. Running the rice under cold water stops the cooking so it stays chewy rather than turning soft and mushy. Rinsing also removes surface starch, so the grains stay separate and fry rather than clump in the pan.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wild rice, sunflower, garlic, corn, sauce, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wild rice, sunflower, garlic, corn, sauce, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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