Joshua Weissman Orange Chicken

This orange chicken certainly looks the part

I’m a big fan or orange chicken, so I’ll be a little more particular here

Time: 55 Minutes

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Orange Chicken is my go to entree when I get Chinese takeout. I think the standard is the orange chicken from Panda Express, so I will definitely be judging this one based on that. Given who made this recipe, I had little doubt that this version would be better. That’s about it for this one. I’m very familiar with fast food and restaurant style orange chicken, so if this one misses the mark, I’ll let you know.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

No Red Pepper Flakes here

The only thing that I left out of this recipe was the red pepper flakes. I’m not very spice tolerant and even though I could’ve just used a conservative amount, I didn’t feel like taking any risk.

Tools:

• Wok (unnecessary, just use something big enough to fry the chicken pieces)
  
  

Cooking Review:

Preparation (chicken, garlic, and ginger): 15 minutes

It’s always a good idea to get all your ingredients prepared before you start actively cooking. It makes everything so much easier and helps prevent you from rushing or getting overwhelmed. In this recipe, the chicken needs to be cut into bitesized pieces, the garlic needs to be chopped, and the ginger grated. You don’t really need to peel the garlic when you’re grating it, most of the skin doesn’t make it through the grater (if using a rasp style).

Sauce: 17 minutes

This step was pretty easy. I just mixed all the ingredients except the water and cornstarch, which are mixed separately to make a slurry. The larger mixture is then heated in a pot and reduced. Once reduced, the slurry is added to help thicken the sauce. I ended up using all the slurry, which made the sauce just thick enough for my liking.You may need more if you like a thicker sauce. I finished the sauce with all the garlic that I had chopped in the previous step.

Lots of garlic goes into this sauce

Frying Chicken and Finishing: 25 Minutes (5 minutes per batch/4 batches)

The frying goes as most other fried chicken goes. Two shallow pans were used to mix together an egg mixture and a flour dredge. The chicken is dipped into the egg mixture, then into the flour dredge before frying the pieces In batches (I used a little less sriracha than what the recipe called for). I will note that I could’ve used a little extra flour for my chicken, but I did have 1.5lbs of chicken instead of 1lb. Otherwise, this step is straightforward. You might want to stir or agitate the chicken once or twice while it’s frying to make sure it cooks evenly. After each batch came out of the oil, I put them in a metal bowl to cool for a little bit before transferring to a larger plastic bowl to toss the chicken in the sauce. There was plenty of sauce for the chicken I had (I didn’t use it all).

Analysis:

The first thing I noticed when I ate this chicken was the orange, which is definitely a good thing considering what the dish is. However, the orange flavor wasn’t as fresh as restaurant quality orange chicken or as sweet as Panda Express orange chicken. This could be because I used premade orange juice instead of fresh squeezed. There was no crispiness remaining after the chicken was tossed in the sauce, but this was expected. With all the garlic added to the sauce, the chicken smelled very garlicky, but the flavor wasn’t all that strong. The garlic was noticeable, but not over the top. The chicken was well cooked, so about 5 minutes for pieces the size of mine should be pretty good as long as the oil temp stays relatively consistent. I was overall left wanting for a little more depth of flavor. Maybe seasoning the chicken with at least some salt could help here. While it does taste like orange chicken, I would take Panda Express over this recipe. It’s not often that the home made version doesn’t offer something extra in comparison to restaurants, but unfortunately, this recipe didn’t really impress me. It’s not bad by any means, so it still gets a 7/10. For this one, unless you’re trying to save money by making it yourself, I think you’ll enjoy a restaurant version a little more.