Day-old cooked rice in your fridge is great for whipping up your go-to fried recipe. But if you want to spruce up your recipe and kick things up a notch, add some mirin.

Mirin is a Japanese cooking wine made from rice. Its sweet taste complements the saltier, savory notes of other popular fried rice additions, like soy sauce and oyster sauce.

Additionally, since it’s a fermented product, mirin works better than just adding a purely sweet ingredient to your fried rice, as it also has some tangy, umami-rich elements.

Simply mix a tablespoon of mirin with the other liquids (like soy sauce and sesame oil) and stir them in at the same time as the rice. Make sure everything gets evenly coated.