The $5 Chinese Dinner That Feeds an Entire Family

📖 Get Make It Go Further — the habits from my mother's kitchen, written down for an American grocery store (244 pages, 46 dinners): https://mrsjinkitchen.com 🥢 Subscribe for a new kitchen habit every week — ordinary groceries, better dinners Tomato and egg over rice, my mother's way: the five-dollar dinner every child in China learns first. If your eggs come out rubbery and your tomatoes sour and watery, nobody showed you that eggs were the meat. The oil has to be hot, the tomato has to give up, and the SUGAR is not optional. Every measure is below. Hao ma? 🍚 THE CLOCK 15 minutes hands-on, no waiting, once the rice is on. Any weeknight. 🍚 THE CARD: MY MOTHER'S TOMATO AND EGG OVER RICE Serves 4. 6 large eggs, beaten with ½ tsp salt 4 ripe tomatoes, about 1½ lb (700 g), cut in wedges (wedges, not dice, so there is still tomato to bite) 3 tbsp neutral oil, divided (hot oil is what keeps the egg soft) 1 tsp sugar (gives a store tomato back what it lost on the truck) ½ tsp salt for the tomatoes 1 tsp soy sauce, optional 2 green onions, cut fine, added with the heat OFF 3 cups cooked white rice, hot Get the rice going first. Everything else takes 10 minutes. Heat a wide pan on high until a drop of water skips. Add 2 tbsp oil and wait until it shimmers, about 30 seconds. Pour in the eggs. Let them puff 10 seconds, then push into big soft folds. Out onto a plate at 30 seconds, still wet in places. Add 1 tbsp oil. Tomatoes in, with ½ tsp salt and the sugar. Medium-high, 4 to 5 minutes, until the skins split and the pan goes from hissing to bubbling. Press a few wedges with the spoon to make sauce. Add the soy if using, and 2 tbsp water if it looks dry. Return the eggs. Fold through the sauce 20 seconds, no more. Turn off the heat. Scatter the green onions. Serve over hot rice. 🍚 I WILL NOT ARGUE Sesame oil at the end, or none. A crushed clove of garlic with the tomatoes, or none. Wetter or drier. Canned whole tomatoes in winter, drained, with less sugar. 🍚 THE PAN IS HONEST Flat rubbery eggs → the oil was not hot. Small dry bits of egg → stirred like breakfast instead of folded. Watery pale tomatoes → they came out before they broke down. Sour → the sugar was left out. Pink wet mess → eggs and tomatoes cooked together from the start. Limp gray green onion → it went in with the fire on. The last of the sauce in the rice → the cook's reward. 🍚 ONE QUIET THING ABOUT THE STORE Six eggs about $2, three tomatoes about $2, rice for four about 50 cents, green onion from a bunch you had. About $5 to feed four, with rice left over. Takeout for the same four is about $40. Nobody is cheating you. The meat in the middle is where the money goes. 🍚 THE HABIT Tomatoes ripen in a bowl on the counter, never in the refrigerator. Cooked rice keeps 4 days covered. Green onion whites regrow in water on the sill. The finished dish keeps 2 days but never goes in the freezer; the egg turns to rubber. 🍚 WHAT I WOULD ASK OF YOU Carry two things: the oil that is hot before the egg, and the pinch of sugar on the tomato. Then tell me if your eggs came out soft, honestly whether you cooked eggs and tomatoes together, and your state. 🍚 NEXT TIME IN THIS KITCHEN A head of cabbage, a splash of vinegar and that pot of rice. #chinesecooking #tomatoandegg #cheapdinner 📖 Get Make It Go Further — the habits from my mother's kitchen, written down for an American grocery store (244 pages, 46 dinners): https://mrsjinkitchen.com