Recipe: Orange Chicken

Orange Chicken with white rice

Covid-19 has forced us to be in lock down since mid March. Michael has been working from home, while I've been doing online classes. Even though we've been staying at home, we've been "eating out" more often than before since we've been ordering delivery or takeout a few times per week because there is days we're too lazy to cook.

We both realized we need to start meal prepping again since we're spending more than we should eating out when we could simply buy the ingredients and cook ourselves, and also, were probably going to put on a few more pounds of unwanted weight by the end of this Covid-19 thing if we don't turn things around.

As our last "cheat meal" before we start our diet, we decided to make Orange chicken. This is Mike's favorite dish so I figured I would spoil him before I torture him with our new diet. 😝 I found a recipe a while back but now I can't remember from what website soooo.... here it is based on how I've been cooking it. I hope it helps.

Orange Chicken Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 Chicken breasts cut into small pieces

• 1/2 cup of flour

• 1/4 cup of cornstarch

• 1 egg, beaten 

• 1/2 cup white vinegar

• 1/4 cup water

• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil

• 3 tablespoons of soy sauce

• 2 tablespoons of rice wine

• 1/2 cup of sugar

• Orange zest from 1 orange

• 2 tablespoons of minced ginger root

• 1 tablespoon of minced garlic

• 1 tablespoon of chili flakes (optional)

• Oil for frying

• White rice (Optional. Whenever I cook this I prepare steamed rice).

Directions:

1. Mix the flour and cornstarch in a small bowl.

2. Mix the white vinegar, water, sesame oil, soy sauce, rice wine, sugar and orange zest in a separate bowl and set aside for later.

3. Dip the chicken into the beaten egg and then into the cornstarch and flour mixture. Make sure the chicken is completely covered.

4. Fry the chicken in a pan until golden brown and placed in a paper towel lined container to absorb the excess oil. Do this with all the chicken.

5. After all the chicken has been fried, reduce the heat and make sure there's some oil in the pan. Add the ginger, garlic and chili flakes into the hot pan and stir for about a minute. (Make sure you have your stove vent on since the chili powder can produce some smoke that can hurt your eyeballs and throat if you inhale it... I learned this the hard way 😝).

6. Add the wet mixture you previously combined (the one with the orange zest in it) to the pan until it starts slightly bubbling. 

7. Add the fried chicken into the pan and stir until it is fully covered by the sauce.

8. Enjoy your orange chicken!!! 🍊🍗

If you try this at home, please let me know, and if you modify the recipe please share with me what you did.