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Brandon Jew, who won the 2022 James Beard Award for Best Chef: California, is chef-owner of Michelin-starred Mister Jiu’s in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The restaurant opened in 2016, on a site that has housed Chinese restaurants since the 1880s.
US-born Jew sees himself as continuing in the tradition of those restaurants, cooking a contemporary version of Chinese-American food. Like the diaspora chefs before him who used whatever ingredients they had access to while trying to stay authentically Chinese, he sources local ingredients hyper-seasonally. He also works closely with nearby farmers to grow organic heritage Chinese ingredients.
“I was looking for something more compelling than just building my own ego as a chef. I wanted to pay homage to something deeper,” he says. “When I realized I was continuing the legacy of restaurants that’ve been doing this in San Francisco for generations, it made me feel at peace.”
But while he may fit into a tradition, it is one he is evolving. He uses non-Chinese ingredients in his dishes, and takes inspiration from varied culinary cultures to create fresh new takes on Chinese cuisine. He is particularly known for his surprising takes on fried rice, including one rendition inspired by dirty rice, a Louisiana Creole dish often containing chopped chicken liver.
Inspired by his mother, who “always packed doggy bags of the scraps of roast beef and ribeye from Saturday nights at Sizzler” to make lunch of fried rice the next day, he also knows the secret to turning leftovers into chef-level showstoppers.
Below, Jew shares tips and two recipes—for strips of steak and for fish off-cuts—that can transform scraps into mouthwatering fried rice meals.
A dish at Mister Jiu's. Photo courtesy of Mister Jiu's
Tips for cooking fried rice
“Cooking fried rice is all about immediacy, but you can begin with a mise of all kinds of leftovers,” says Jew. “The whole point of fried rice is to showcase the ethereal charred, smoky flavor, aroma, and texture known as wok hei. A wok makes this a lot easier to achieve, but I’ve made it happen with a thin cast-iron pan, too.”
For professional-standard fried rice, Jew recommends using hydrated but not moist rice—fresh rice turns mushy whereas yesterday’s leftover rice left uncovered in the refrigerator fries up airy.
The rice should be cold when you start and the pan scorching hot. “Whatever you’re imagining is probably not hot enough,” he says.
“Turn up the flame and open your windows. Wait for that initial wok hei to hit your nose before adding the oil, then swirl the oil all around and up the sides of the pan. As you cook, unless you have a wok-burner on your gas range or a Chinese hearth stove well-stocked with firewood, you will have to turn up the heat each time you add something new and lower it again before the smoke gets out of control.”
Keep things moving in the pan by tossing everything up and around using a wide metal spatula. Your pan or wok should be 14-inch/ 35cm or larger in diameter, or cook in batches and combine at the end.
Steak fried-rice recipe
Serves 2-4
Ingredients
3 oz/85g broccolini or broccoli, cut into small florets and stems cut into ½inch/1cm pieces
1 egg
Kosher salt
1 tsp neutral oil, plus 1 Tbsp
4 oz/115g ribeye, hanger, or skirt steak, diced into 1inch/2.5cm cubes
2 cups/230g cold, cooked long-grain jasmine rice
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 green onion, thinly sliced crosswise
1 small piece cured beef heart (this may require a special order from the butcher), salted egg yolks, or bottarga
Method
Bring a small saucepan of heavily salted water (it should remind you of seawater) to a boil over high heat. Add the broccolini and blanch until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Drain and set aside.
In a small bowl, beat the egg with a pinch of salt. Warm a wok or a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Add the 1 tsp neutral oil, then the egg, and cook, stirring occasionally, until softly scrambled but with no browning, about 30 seconds. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.
Warm the pan over high heat until just starting to smoke. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of neutral oil, then add the steak in an even layer, and season with salt. Cook without moving until well-seared on the bottom, about 1½ minutes.
Add the rice, broccolini, and scrambled egg and toss to combine and break up any lumps in the rice. Keep everything moving until heated through, 1½ to 2 minutes.
Now let the rice sit without stirring until the bottom browns and lightly chars in spots, about 1 minute. Smell that wok hei? If not, stir up the rice again and let it brown once more.
Add the oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil to the rice and toss continuously until well
combined, about 1 minute.
Transfer to a serving bowl, top with the green onion, and shave a generous dusting of cured beef heart, salted egg yolk, or bottarga over everything. Eat immediately.
Brandon Jew and writer Tienlon Ho. Photos: Pete Lee/Mister Jiu's
Salted fish fried-rice recipe
Use up leftover cooked fish in this deeply umami dish, or save raw fish that you have run out of time to cook by salting it for another day.
Use a 3-5% sea salt by weight; black cod or other white-fleshed fish works well. Leave the skin on, salt both sides of the filet, then lay skin up on paper towel in the refrigerator for two days. Change the paper towel each day. Pat the fish dry on day three before either frying or steaming it. Then flake it up to put it into fried rice.
Serves 4
Ingredients
1 quart/500g of cooked jasmine rice, ideally dried overnight then broken up the next day into individual grains
2oz/56g salted fish, steamed and broken into large chunks
2oz/56g lap cheong Chinese sausage, steamed then cut on a bias ¼inch/0.5cm thick
1oz/28g scallion, cut into thin rings
1 whole duck egg, whisked until homogenous (can be substituted with chicken egg)
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp fish sauce
Method
Toast rice
Warm a wok or a large cast-iron skillet over high heat until just starting to smoke. Add 2 tablespoons of neutral oil and swirl.
Add the rice and stir with a flat-bottomed wooden spoon. Mix thoroughly so the rice gets evenly coated with the oil and begins to toast in the pan. Break up any clumps of rice. Approximately 2 mins. Smell that wok hei? If not, stir up the rice again and let it brown once more.
Add ingredients
Add lap cheong and mix through the rice. Then add salted fish and mix through the rice. Be mindful that no one area is getting too brown.
Season the rice
Add the oyster sauce, fish sauce, and sesame oil to the rice and toss continuously until well
combined, about 1 minute.
Move the rice to one side of the pan and then add 1 tablespoon of neutral oil and add duck egg directly to the oil. Move the egg around to scramble it. Then start incorporating it into the rice.
Transfer to a serving bowl, top with the scallions.
The steak fried rice recipe is reprinted with permission from Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown: Recipes and Stories from the Birthplace of Chinese American Food by Brandon Jew and Tienlon Ho, copyright © 2021. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Buy it here.
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