Blackstone Chicken Fried Rice - Our Tried and True Recipe! (2024)

If you want to make Blackstone chicken fried rice on the griddle, then you’re in the right place! After testing dozens of griddle fried rice recipes, we’ve nailed down the perfect flavors and techniques, and we’re sharing all of our secrets with you!

Fried rice is probably one of the top 5 griddle recipes that made you want to buy a flat top grill in the first place. And it doesn’t matter if you add chicken, shrimp, pork, or beef, this fried rice recipe is fantastic! In fact, this Blackstone chicken fried rice is hands-down better than any takeout restaurant fried rice that we’ve ever had.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through the step-by-step process of cooking the perfect Blackstone Chicken Fried Rice on the griddle, including how to cook and cool the rice, what type of rice to use, and what order to cook the ingredients so that your griddle fried rice comes together perfectly!

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Ingredients for Chicken Fried Rice

After a lot of trial and error to determine the best flavor profile, rice variety, and methods for cooking chicken fried rice on the griddle, these are the ingredients needed to make our favorite fried rice recipe:

For the Fried Rice:

• white rice – We prefer to use either Jasmine rice or Basmati rice for fried rice.
• diced onions
• peas and carrots – We recommend the frozen peas and carrots mix, but you can also use fresh, raw diced carrots.
• butter
• garlic – We prefer to use minced fresh garlic to flavor our fried rice. The melted butter and garlic “rice well” technique that I’ll show you down below is a game-changer!
• soy sauce
• oyster sauce
• sesame oil
• avocado oil – Or your favorite cooking oil.
• crunchy garlic chili sauce – This is optional, but it’s one of our absolute favorite ingredients to add to Asian recipes! We really like this brand!
• eggs – Optional, but we like the extra texture and pop of flavor that the scrambled eggs add. Not to mention, adding the eggs is a budget-friendly way to add more protein to the dish.
• green onion – We used the whites and greens of the sliced green onions at different stages of the recipe.

For the Chicken:

• boneless skinless chicken breasts – You can also use boneless skinless chicken thighs if you prefer. In fact, if you’re a beginner griddle cook, then you may want to use thighs because they are less prone to drying out if you accidentally overcook them.
• cornstarch – For the velveting technique – more about that later.
• soy sauce
• avocado oil
• water
• sugar

All About the Rice

One of the most crucial steps to making the best chicken fried rice on the Blackstone is properly cooking and cooling the rice. But before you get to that point, you’ve got to select the right type of rice to use. Here’s how we make the best rice for fried rice:

Selecting the Best Rice for Fried Rice

After testing fried rice on the griddle using a variety of white rices, water ratios, and cooling times, our two recommendations for rice choice are jasmine rice and basmati rice. Both types of long-grain rice are fragrant and require rinsing before cooking, but the main difference between the two is that jasmine is softer and seems to clump together more, and basmati will have more of a dry taste and the grains stay more individualized.

From our experience with Chinese restaurant fried rice, it seems like basmati more closely resembles the type that you would get at a takeout restaurant, because the grains stay separated and the rice has more of a dry taste. However, we prefer the flavor of jasmine rice, even though it tends to clump together more.

Cooking and Cooling the Rice

Besides using the right rice, the second most crucial step to making fried rice is cooking and cooling your rice properly.

That’s why we recommend a rice cooker, especially if you’re planning to make griddle fried rice often, because it takes the guesswork out and perfectly cooks your rice every time. If you don’t have a rice cooker, then you can just follow the instructions on the package of rice to cook it on the stovetop.

For this chicken fried rice recipe, we added these ingredients to our rice cooker:

• 2 cups of rinsed jasmine rice – Be sure that you have rinsed the dry rice well under running water first.
• 3 cups of water – The package instructions for the rice that we used called for 1.5 cups of water per cup of dry rice.
• 1 tablespoon of chicken bouillon – Since rice is naturally pretty bland, we like to add flavor whenever possible. Adding the chicken bouillon, or substituting about half of the water with chicken stock, really intensifies the chicken flavor.

When the rice is done cooking, spread it out into a thin, even layer on a large sheet tray and allow it to cool completely.

You can either refrigerate the cooked rice on the sheet tray overnight, or just let it cool down to room temperature on the counter, which should take about 3 hours. We have tried making fried rice using both methods, and you really can’t tell a difference in the two.

The most important thing is to NOT use hot or warm rice for fried rice, because the starches haven’t had a chance to cool down and your rice will get sticky and clump together in a mushy mess.

How to Make Chicken Fried Rice on the Blackstone

Blackstone chicken fried rice is easy to make, even though there are multiple steps and many ingredients involved to make your fried rice “better than takeout”. But if you take the time to prep your ingredients first, and properly cook and cool your rice, it will be fantastic!

Just follow these steps to make our favorite chicken fried rice on the griddle:

Step 1: Prep the chicken.

The first step is to cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces for your griddle chicken fried rice. If you’ve ever ordered chicken fried rice from a Chinese restaurant, then it probably came with the chicken cut into thin strips, similar to chicken fajitas, rather than perfectly square cubes. When we ordered chicken fried rice from two different local restaurants (to try and make our recipe better than takeout!), both of them had chicken that was thinly sliced. So that’s what we went with for this griddle recipe.

To cut the chicken, first cut the breasts in half lengthwise so that you have two longer, thinner pieces of meat. In the grocery store, you can buy chicken that is already cut this way – it’s probably labeled as “thin sliced” or “chicken cutlets”. Then, slice the chicken for stir fries into strips that are about 1/4″ thick. Your chicken should look something like this:

After your chicken is sliced, it’s time to velvet the meat.

Velveting is a popular technique used in Chinese stir fry dishes that helps to tenderize the meat. Many say that it is a crucial step in keeping the chicken, beef, or seafood moist and protecting the meat from the hot temperatures of the wok.

There are a few different methods that can be used to velvet chicken. Some people swear by baking soda velveting, while others use egg whites or oil to velvet chicken. For this recipe, we used a cornstarch marinade to velvet the boneless skinless chicken breasts.

First, add the sliced chicken to a large bowl. Then, pour in the water and soy sauce and mix together well so that each piece of chicken is evenly coated and moist. Next, add the oil and cornstarch and mix well. Allow the chicken to rest for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, or some people say that you can refrigerate it overnight as well.

Your chicken should look something like this:

Step 2: Prep the other ingredients.

Since we let our chicken rest for about one hour, we used that time to prep all of the other chicken fried rice ingredients.

One of my biggest tips for griddle beginners is to mise en place, or to have all of your ingredients measured out and prepared in advance. That includes dicing the onions, peeling and mincing the garlic, slicing the green onions, and measuring out the liquid ingredients.

Once you start adding ingredients to the hot griddle surface, this recipe comes together fairly quickly. Even the chicken will cook quickly because it’s sliced thin. So having your ingredients ready to go will alleviate some of the pressures that come along with the fast pace of flat top grilling.

Step 3: Cook the rice and vegetables on the griddle.

When all of the ingredients are prepped, preheat your griddle to about 375-400 degrees F. Then, add some of your favorite cooking oil to the surface and spread it around with your spatula. Add the cooled rice to the oiled surface, and spread it out in a thin, even layer so that it can begin to heat up.

There’s no need to “chop” your rice with the side of your spatula, because that could change the grain size and texture. Instead, allow the griddle to do the work for you. As the rice heats, it will naturally start to break apart into more individual grains. Use your griddle spatulas to mix the rice a bit as it’s heating.

As soon as you add the rice to the griddle to begin heating, you can go ahead and add the diced onions as well. (If you’re using fresh diced carrots, then now is the time to add those also.) The raw onions will take longer to cook than the frozen peas and carrots.

Season the rice and onions with pepper and a small amount of salt. You don’t want to over-salt your ingredients at this point, because the soy sauce and oyster sauce that you’ll add later have a higher salt content. You can always add more salt at the end of the recipe if needed.

When the diced onions and carrots are almost done cooking, add the peas to the griddle and mix all of the vegetables together.

Step 4: Make a “rice well” for the garlic and butter.

This one simple step makes a HUGE difference in the flavor of your chicken fried rice, or any griddle fried rice recipe for that matter. When we were testing different recipes for fried rice on the griddle, we found that the secret is to use fresh garlic and marry it with a rich butter flavor.

To do so, after your rice is heated through and your vegetables are cooked, make a “well” in the center of your pile of rice like the photo below. Add a few tablespoons of butter and the minced fresh garlic to the well, and stir it around a bit with your spatula like this:

Allow the garlic to cook in the butter for about 1-2 minutes to release the aromatic flavors of the garlic. Then, when the garlic has a bit of color, toss the butter garlic mixture with the rice and mix together. This method for sautéing the garlic adds so much flavor to your Blackstone chicken fried rice, and we swear by it!

Mix the vegetables and rice together and move them to the side of your griddle to make room for the chicken.

Step 5: Cook the chicken on the Blackstone griddle.

There are only a few steps left and you’ll be enjoying your better-than-takeout chicken fried rice! Next up is the chicken.

Add a bit of your favorite cooking oil to the griddle surface and spread it around with your spatula. Then, add the velveted chicken to the oiled surface, making sure that each piece of chicken has its own “landing zone” and comes in contact with the griddle surface. This helps your chicken to sear and develop a nice crust and flavor, versus just piling it all on the griddle and causing it to steam more than sear.

Your chicken should look something like this at this point:

Allow the chicken to cook untouched for about 1-2 minutes on the first side, and then sauté together. When the chicken is cooked through, it’s time to add all of the ingredients together for this awesome Blackstone chicken fried rice!

Step 6: Add the cooked chicken and sauces to the fried rice.

Add the cooked chicken to the fried rice and mix everything together.

*If you’re using the crunchy garlic chili sauce, then now is the time to add that. Just make a “well” in the chicken fried rice, just like you did for the garlic and butter, and add about 1-2 tablespoons of the chili sauce to the griddle to warm up. Then, mix it into the fried rice mixture like this:

Next, pour soy sauce and oyster sauce over the rice and chicken mixture. Use your spatula to toss everything together, ensuring the sauces coat every grain of rice and every piece of chicken.

Step 7: Add the scrambled eggs to the chicken fried rice on the griddle.

If you like scrambled eggs in your chicken fried rice, then add those next.

There are a few different methods to do this, like cooking the scrambled eggs on the griddle separately and then adding them to the rice, or pouring the liquid eggs right over top of the chicken fried rice and stirring them in as they cook, but we prefer a method that combines both of these:

Pour about half of the scrambled eggs over the side area of the fried rice, and pour the remaining eggs directly on the griddle near the fried rice. Stir the eggs on the griddle as they cook, just like you would do for griddle scrambled eggs. Then, when the eggs are almost done (but still moist) mix them into the chicken fried rice.

Step 8: Garnish and serve your Blackstone chicken fried rice.

Sprinkle chopped green onions over the Blackstone Chicken Fried Rice for a burst of freshness and color. The green onions add a mild onion flavor that complements the dish beautifully.

As the very last step, drizzle about 1-2 tablespoons of sesame oil on top of the chicken fried rice and briefly mix it together. Then, your new favorite fried rice dish is ready to serve!

Serve the chicken fried rice hot, straight from the griddle, onto plates or bowls.

This chicken fried rice recipe is great as is, but we like to up the flavor even more by adding some Yum Yum sauce or Siracha hot sauce. You can also serve your fried rice with extra soy sauce or sweet chili sauce.

FAQ’s about Making Chicken Fried Rice on the Griddle

Can I use a different type of rice for this recipe?

While jasmine and basmati rice are recommended for fried rice, you can experiment with other varieties like brown rice or long-grain white rice if you adjust the cooking time accordingly. However, I would stay away from other rice varieties like arborio rice or sushi rice, because their sticky textures make them a poor choice for stir fries and fried rice recipes.

Can I use pre-cooked or rotisserie chicken instead of raw chicken breasts?

Absolutely! Using pre-cooked chicken or other leftover proteins can save time. Simply shred the cooked chicken and add it towards the end of the cooking process to warm through.

How do I prevent my rice from sticking to the griddle?

Make sure your griddle is well-oiled before adding the rice. Additionally, using cooled rice helps reduce stickiness.

Can I make this recipe vegetarian?

Certainly! Skip the chicken and add more vegetables or tofu for a delicious vegetarian version.

What other sauces can I use for flavor?

Experiment with hoisin sauce, teriyaki sauce, or chili garlic sauce to give your chicken fried rice a unique twist.

Can I add other vegetables to my chicken fried rice?

While peas, carrots, and onions are most popular, you can definitely experiment with other vegetables for a hearty and healthy spin on fried rice. Broccoli florets, corn kernels, sugar snap peas, snow peas, or cut green beans would all be good in this recipe.

Any other griddle fried rice recipes to try?

Glad you asked! I’ve got a few other griddle fried rice recipes for you to try including:

• Mexican Fried Rice with Chicken – Easy Fried Rice Recipe!
• Steak and Mushroom Fried Rice on the Griddle
• Cajun Shrimp Fried Rice on the Blackstone Griddle

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