Tasty Tuesday: Cream Cheese Rangoons & Shrimp Fried Rice

Lately, I have been trying to perfect classic Chinese restaurant food at home. We live on a pretty strict budget, so going out to eat is not something we do often. That being said, I thought it would be fun to start cooking some of the items we get when we go out, at home. It is so much cheaper and actually healthier because I can control the ingredients and the amount that goes into each meal. Last week, I made vegetable fried rice and sweet and sour chicken. It was a success! We thought it tasted better than takeout! So, this week I decided on a shrimp fried rice and one of our FAVORITE unhealthy foods: Rangoons!! My favorite kind of rangoon is the cream cheese filled kind. I love them all, but I don't feel like the crab is even necessary. I found this recipe on Pinterest and went for it! The fried rice recipe is based off of a basic recipe that I have tweaked to our liking!

For the Cream Cheese Rangoons, I used the Nasoya wonton wraps which are located in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, a couple eggs, a brick of cream cheese, some green onions, an entire small bottle of vegetable oil, and some roasted garlic. The recipe calls for regular garlic, but we had roasted some earlier and thought we would utilize it. It tasted great!

You simply chop the onions and garlic, warm the cream cheese a bit, and mix it all together. Then you take a wonton wrapper, fill it with a small amount of the filling, then brush it with egg, and fold it any way you possibly can! I recruited the hubby to do this part. He was much better at it than I was! Then you simply drop them in the hot vegetable oil for about a minute. Voila! Delicious!

Here is what it looked like before it was fried:

For the shrimp fried rice, I used a few cups of cooked white rice (I used the instant kind.. one cup water to one cup rice .. and then used a couple cups.. easy peasy), some frozen peas, carrots, and broccoli (I don't measure these, just eye them .. and I precooked them in the microwave prior to making the rice), a bag of thawed cooked shrimp, 3 eggs, low sodium soy sauce (as much as you want), and canola oil.

First, I poured a little oil in the pan and scrambled the eggs. I then spooned the cooked eggs on top of the vegetables for safe keeping. Then, I added some more oil to pan (about enough to coat the bottom) and added the rice. Then I poured a bunch of soy sauce all over it and mixed the rice to combine. I usually end up adding more once the other ingredients are added. Then I added the veggies, eggs, and shrimp into the pan and mixed together. I cooked it until it looked ready and tasted delicious!!

I will never order fried rice again. It is so easy, so versatile, and so extremely delicious!! I like making a big batch for dinner and eating it for lunch for several days after. I could just eat this for dinner. It has all of your major food groups, it is chock full of protein and vegetables. It is definitely one of my new favorite meals!

Here is the meal all together:

It was scrumptious! My husband and I both loved it! The Cream Cheese Rangoons were such a perfect copycat. They were crunchy on the outside and gooey and yummy inside. It was so much cheaper to make than take out and the outcome tasted healthier and much better! They were not the greasy rangoons that we usually get. We loved them. I would definitely recommend trying this meal out!!