Name: 5-Ingredient Cheesy Fried Broccoli Rice
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 15 min
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 1 medium onion, chopped; 2 garlic cloves, crushed; 2 cups = 470 ml riced broccoli; 2 organic free-range eggs; 1 cup = 240 ml shredded sharp cheese; (butter or extra-virgin olive oil for frying)

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Imagine a cheese-oozing, quick-to-make keto-friendly dish that works wonderfully as a satisfying side dish or as a light meal. Rich and mellow, this Cheesy Fried Broccoli Rice — a ketoized and nutritious version of the famous fried rice dish — pleases the palates of kids and adults alike.

How to make this Cheesy Fried Broccoli Rice

This recipe is yet another wonderful example of how to make tasty and nutritious meals with just 5 ingredients. Well, naturally, you can add more spices and seasonings if you want to amp up the basic recipe. It’s also worth using sharp cheese to get more flavor.

When preparing this dish, the main idea is to keep the broccoli rice crisp-tender — almost raw. When there is something to bite, the result is palate-pleasing. The other ingredients (cheese, eggs, onions) are soft, so it’s worth keeping your broccoli crisp enough to create different textures to the dish.

Plus, uncooked broccoli is higher in nutrients than cooked. Actually, this also means that uncooked broccoli has goitrogens. So, if you suffer from hypothyroidism, you indeed might want to cook your broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables as cooking removes goitrogens.

Still a word about broccoli rice, or actually riced broccoli. I’m lucky to find ready riced broccoli from the grocery store, but if you don’t find any, just process chunks of broccoli in a food processor until rice-like consistency. Alternatively, you can use a grater, but that usually produces a huge mess since the broccoli rice is just shooting around your kitchen.

That’s it, let’s take a look at how to prepare this quick and easy keto fried rice recipe:

Heat a skillet over medium heat.

Add butter or extra-virgin olive oil.

Add chopped 1 medium onion…

…and 2 crushed garlic cloves.

Cook, stirring…

…until translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add 2 cups (470 ml) broccoli rice.

Stir until well mixed with the onion. Don’t overcook! This dish still needs some cooking, so you want to keep your broccoli almost raw at this stage.

Take 2 eggs.

Crack the eggs into a small bowl.

Whisk lightly with a fork.

Pour the eggs into the broccoli rice.

Cook, until curdled, about 1-2 minutes.

Add 1 cup (240 ml) shredded sharp cheese.

Stir until the cheese is melted, about 1 minute.

Ready! Serve as a satisfying side dish or as a light main course, for example, with green salad and vinaigrette.

How I came up with this keto fried broccoli rice recipe

I usually plan my blog recipes well in advance and what I’m going to post here. I have a looong list of recipe ideas to develop. This recipe, however, is an extempore recipe, meaning it wasn’t on my idea list, nor did I even have any concept about fried broccoli rice.

But, I came up with the idea of fried broccoli rice when I was about to leave our summer house after staying there for some time, and I was using the leftover food and ingredients from the fridge. I noticed a box of broccoli rice that was about to expire. I usually add broccoli rice to my salads, so I eat it raw, but now I got the idea to make fried broccoli rice. Why not? I often make dishes with fried cauliflower rice, so I thought broccoli rice would work well, too. Maybe even better, since it has more color and a better texture.

So, I started pondering the ingredients of my fried broccoli rice recipe. Broccoli and eggs, naturally, but what else? I was planning to use tamari or coconut aminos as a seasoning, but in the summer house, I didn’t have any. Well, fish sauce would have been another good option to lend enough flavor to the mild dish, but I didn’t have any fish sauce either. I didn’t let that disturb me, but I grabbed some vegetable bouillon powder. I could always fine-tune the recipe later at home, where I have ingredients galore for almost any keto dish.

To keep the recipe close to the authentic fried rice recipe, I chose to add onion and garlic. Well, except I didn’t have any garlic in the summer house! Anyway, I could always add it to the final recipe once I’ve seen how my idea of fried broccoli rice works in practice.

Now, I had my 5 ingredients: broccoli rice, eggs, vegetable bouillon powder (instead of tamari or coconut aminos), onion, and (the non-existing) garlic. First, I cooked 1 chopped medium onion until translucent. I added the broccoli rice and mixed it well with the cooked onion. I didn’t want to cook the broccoli for too long as I wanted to keep it crisp. Initially, my aim was to use 2 cups (470 ml) of broccoli rice, but I had only about 1 1/2 cups (350 ml).

Next, I added 2 lightly whisked eggs and the vegetable bouillon powder. I cooked the mixture all the time stirring until the eggs had curdled.

Now the most exciting part: tasting. The texture was pretty good, but there was a lot to improve in the taste, I thought. Well, if I added garlic and coconut aminos or tamari to the final recipe, they would clearly bring more taste. But still, I found the dish a bit too bland. It certainly needed something. But what?

Then, it suddenly hit me: cheese! Shredded cheese would melt beautifully and bring the needed richness to the dish. And if I used sharp cheese, it would lend some flavor as well. Sounded perfect!

Luckily, I had a couple of bags of shredded cheese left from my keto pizza crust experiments. I added 1/2 cup (120 ml) cheese to my fried broccoli rice. The cheese melted beautifully, however, I wanted to have an even cheesier result, so I added another 1/2 cup (120 ml). Now, the dish was just perfect!

At home, I did the final experiment with garlic and without vegetable bouillon powder. I was extremely pleased with this simple yet satisfying and super scrumptious dish! So delicious!

Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:

5-Ingredient Cheesy Fried Broccoli Rice

Yield: 4

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 cups = 470 ml riced broccoli
2 organic free-range eggs
1 cup = 240 ml shredded sharp cheese
(butter or extra-virgin olive oil for frying)

Instructions

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add butter or olive oil. Add the onion and the garlic. Cook, stirring, until translucent, about 5 minutes.
Add the broccoli rice. Stir, until well mixed with the onion. Don't overcook! The broccoli should stay almost raw.
Whisk the eggs lightly in a separate bowl. Pour into the skillet with the broccoli rice. Cook, stirring, until curdled, about 1-2 minutes.
Add the cheese and cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes or until melted. Season to taste.
Serve immediately as a satisfying side dish or as a light meal.

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Nutrition information	In total	Per serving if 4 servings in total
Protein	53.2 g	13.3 g
Fat	56.8 g	14.2 g
Net carbs	10.7 g	2.7 g
kcal	783 kcal	196 kcal

Tips for variation

You can get a lot of variation to this dish with different seasonings. As the basic dish is pretty mild — yet tasty — you can add more kick with hot spices like cayenne, chipotle, red pepper flakes, or with hot sauces like Louisiana Hot Sauce or Sriracha.

As the recipe for fried rice originates from Asia, many Asian-style spices and seasonings are a great addition to fried broccoli rice as well. Different curry pastes work wonderfully with this keto dish. Just check that your curry paste is sugar-free and without any food additives.

For an exciting twist, mix some grated lemon or lime peel to the ready dish. Don’t cook, as the peel loses its fresh taste as the precious essential oils evaporate if cooked. Alternatively, you can drizzle freshly squeezed lemon juice on top of the servings.

Naturally, you can replace the broccoli rice with cauliflower rice or shirataki rice.

If you don’t tolerate dairy, you can get plant-based natural cheese flavor from nutritional yeast. Use 1-2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast to this dish to replace the cheese.

And once again, all the bacon lovers out there can add plenty of crumbled fried bacon on top of the dish (this cauliflower rice recipe is a wonderful example of how bacon works with fried vegetable rice).

General prattling

I stayed a couple of weeks in our summer house and finally returned home this week. It was so lovely to stay there for a while and enjoy the silence, clean air, and beautiful nature among others (with emphasis on “among others”). I was lucky to see some animals as well, like a white-tailed deer, elks, swans, hares, woodpeckers, and cranes. The blackbirds were singing beautifully in the forest, and they made quick visits in the yard as well. What was the most amazing thing (well, second amazing, actually, after that ”among others”) was that the thick ice on the big lake melted entirely in just three days!

When I drove back to Tampere, the weather was snowy.

However, when I arrived home, the sun was shining and I saw beautiful (and very typical Finnish) spring flowers in our yard.

I was also happy to notice that the local big store had taken our Ketokamu chocolate products to their selection.

Since it was May Day and my son had some celebrations at school, too, I baked some keto donuts with our upcoming Ketokamu baking mix. I also made a glaze with dark chocolate, butter, and vanilla. The donuts turned out amazingly mouth-watering!

I also did some experiments with our Ketokamu Ketolla chocolate and nut spread. I served it on warmed leipäjuusto (Finnish Squeaky Cheese), with whipped cream and our Keto Chocolate-Covered Raspberries on side. Yum!