Who hasn't had orange chicken before?

Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Panda Express might be the most popular ‘Chinese’ restaurant in the United States. Their most popular dish has got to be the orange chicken. In my experience, whenever I’ve tried to make orange chicken from other recipes they’ve come out pretty underwhelming. Now, do I really think that this recipe will be much different? Giving the recipe a once over, I do think it has a better chance of competing with Panda Express, as the chicken is coated and fried then coated in sauce. I don’t recall the others doing that. I hope this one delivers.

Key Ingredients & Omissions:

I used more chicken than the recipe called for (2.5 lbs vs 2 lbs). I also used a combination of fresh squeezed orange juice and bottled orange juice. This is because the two oranges I bought didn’t have the 3/4 cup of juice that the recipe called for. The ingredients in this recipe are pretty simple and you shouldn’t have a hard time finding everything.

Tools:

• Large Skillet

• Sauce pot

Cooking Review:

Prep: 16 minutes

The prep for this recipe really just included chopping up the boneless skinless chicken thighs and squeezing the oranges.

Sauce: 21 minutes

Next, I mixed all the ingredients for the sauce in the sauce pot and brought it to a simmer. Once at a simmer, I let it thicken up before removing from the heat.

Coating Chicken: 8 minutes (to finish)

While the sauce was simmering, I started coating the chicken with the egg and cornstarch. I did have to add more cornstarch than the recipe called for, but this makes sense as I had more chicken.

Cook Chicken: 31 minutes

Once the chicken had all been coated, I heated some oil in a large skillet and added some of my chicken in a layer to shallow fry. I let each side cook for. About 3-4 minutes before transferring to a paper towel lined plate to cool. I ended up having 4 batches total. I also chopped up some scallions while the final batch cooked.

Coating chicken in sauce: 3 minutes

To finish the chicken, I added all the chicken back into the skillet and poured the sauce over the chicken. I then turned the heat to medium and tossed the chicken in the sauce. In these three minutes, the sauce thickened up nicely and coated all the chicken well. I served the chicken with some of the scallions on top.

Analysis:

I really enjoyed the crispiness that the chicken was able to retain despite being coated in sauce. Most other recipes I’ve tried become pretty soggy immediately. The flavor was very good, as well. I can actually taste the orange flavor from the juices and there’s a good balance of tanginess and sweetness. There’s also a low amount of spiciness which is nice. When comparing to Panda Express, I like the fresher orange flavor and spice that this recipe had over the fast food version. I’m going to give this recipe a 9/10. It’s pretty easy to make and gives you a way to make a popular restaurant dish even better at home.