Sushi quality Calrose rice from Costco $17.99 for 25 lbs. We used to buy expensive rice twice to 5 times that price but frankly, not much difference.
Calrose rice is a medium grain rice which tastes great, plan or use for other dishes.
For fried rice, one time a chef whom design airline food ( yeah right , airline food..... ) told me that he had the best tasting fried rice during a flight on a Chinese airline like no other SkyChef could prepare, so he asked to visit the ground facility which prepared the dishes. The secret was using pork fat for fried rice, which will not be use for food preparation here. The simplest way is to cook the meat first and leave the flavored cooking oil for mixing the rice and other ingredients. We use one package of Costco Medium spice Italian sausage ( 5-6 large links, discard the casing and loosen the meat while cooking with a little oil ), take out the cooked sausage meat and grease , separate them for use later. Cook dices vegetable until 80% done , take it out and set aside, Lots of oil for scrambled egg , take it out set aside. Put sausage grease back into the deep stir fry pan ,add chopped onion or scallion, quickly put rice in and separate it while stirring adding all the cooked ingredients back in. Quickly stir it until mixed and enjoy.
To cook every ingredients separately is to prevent soggy fried rice. Our kids like a firmer texture, so don't over cook in the last step after adding the rice. For those whom would venture, bacon fat is also great. If you use a rice cooker, after the rice is cooked, stir and left it stand with the lid open so the most steam would escape to produce a firmer textured rice. I often use rice just cooked 10 minutes prior for stir fried.
Arnie is correct on using the "day old" refrigerated rice for stir fried rice. Actually a freshly cooked rice with less water for firmer texture or using a long grain rice like Jasmine will also give the same texture.
If you like saucy or soggy friend rice, you could put in more sauce or just cook it a bit longer and the rice would have more moisture from the vegetable.
One last note for the cook with less time to wash and chop, Organic frozen Baby Pea from Costco is also great if you have no other veggie besides onion.
We use the same method for stir fried noodle/rice sticks.... a little variation adjusted according to the ingredients.
