Eric Huang is the chef and founder of Pecking House in New York City. Eric cut his teeth in Michelin-starred restaurants in NYC, beginning at Cafe Boulud, then Gramercy Tavern, and finally Eleven Madison Park. He was a sous chef at EMP with the team that earned the title of “Best Restaurant in the World&#39;” in 2017.

Eric Huang

Dirty rice is an iconic Creole dish of seasoned rice mixed with chopped up, cooked down offal, often chicken livers and giblets. The “dirty” in the name refers to the speckled brown coloring the rice takes on once the livers and giblets have been mixed in. Deeply savory, with a pronounced minerality from the liver and other offal, it’s one of the all-time great side dishes.Fried rice is an iconic Chinese dish of rice tossed in a wok with finely cut vegetables and proteins. The best fried rice consists of cooked rice, coated in fat so that each individual grain is distinct, tossed in ripping-hot wok over the flames of a high-output gas burner, which periodically ignite aerosolized fat to produce the inimitable smoky flavor known as wok hei. What this recipe asks is: What happens if you made dirty rice, but with Chinese fried rice technique? It’s one of the most popular sides that we serve alongside our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/chili-fried-chicken">Chili Fried Chicken</a> at <a href="https://www.peckinghouse.com/">Pecking House</a>.We borrow “the scrape” technique from Cajun cuisine, in which a purée of chicken liver is smeared onto a cast iron griddle and cooked until deeply browned on the bottom, and then it’s scraped off the griddle and chopped up into fine bits with a spatula. We also use the Cajun “trinity”—celery, green bell pepper, and onion—to hit that distinct flavor profile. But we cook everything in a ripping-hot wok, and we use the standard techniques for making great fried rice: cooking, cooling, drying, and fluffing the rice beforehand, so the grains of rice remain distinct; cutting the vegetables into the finest of dices, so they cook to “tender-crisp” in seconds; and, of course, using a high-output burner so the flames lick the fried rice as it’s tossed just over the lip of the wok, for wok hei.Each grain of rice is coated in oil (and a little butter, for richness), and each bite has a little minerality from tiny speckles of charred chicken liver, a little sweetness from the onion, and a little grassiness from the celery and bell pepper. Seasoned with salt and a little MSG, it’s a side that works incredibly well with strongly seasoned mains (like our Chili Fried Chicken) but can also stand on its own as a light meal.

Dirty Fried Rice