I have to honest here, in the beginning, I didn’t even think orange chicken is a real dish. Orange chicken is not very popular in Taiwan. It is one of the dishes that has no history behind it, unlike mapo tofu or sukiyaki. Orange chicken is only popular in US. I was even surprised when I first came to US and found that they serve orange chicken in almost every single Chinese restaurant. If I have to put my Chinese pride aside, I have to admit, although it’s not an authentic Chinese dish, this is a pretty good dish and it tastes really good. Today we will try out this awesome dish at home. Let’s begin!
Ingredients
- 1 pound of skinless boneless chicken thigh
- 3 cloves of garlic minced
- 4 cups of oil
sauce ingredients
- 1/4 cup orange juice
- 1/2 teaspoon orange zest (optional)
- 3 tablespoons of water
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 4 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon of rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
batter ingredients
- 6 tbsp of cake flour
- 2 tbsp of rice flour
- 2 tbsp of cornstarch
- 1 tsp of baking powder
- 1.5 tbsp of oil
- ½ cup of water
Lots of Chinese dishes are done in this familiar way. They fry battered protein and then stir in thick sauce. Some examples include sweet and sour pork, orange chicken, lemon chicken, sesame chicken, walnut shrimps, etc. The idea is to use the batter crust as a sponge to soak up more sauce, thus making the dish savory and flavorful.
First, mix the sauce ingredient. It’s normal if it looks watery. After we cook it, the volume will be reduced and the cornstarch will thicken the sauce. Put it aside for later. Second, mix the batter.if you notice, it’s the same batter for walnut shrimp recipe. Once it’s mixed, set aside for later use. Third, cube the chicken at 1”. In my opinion, dark meat such as thigh or drumsticks is always preferred over white meat like chicken breast. Dark meat is harder to overcook and taste great for a fry dish like this. Mix your cubed chicken in the batter, time to start frying.
Here is my personal finding on some facts to share with you. I love to fry but frying is not a friendly cooking process to the home environment. Here are some challenges with frying at home:
It splatters
The whole house will smell oily
The frying pot get terribly sticky and it’s super hard to clean
You need to wash a lot of stuff afterward
Here is my solution
buy a splatter screen guard.
buy a Strainer colander
buy a stainless steel container (usually mixing bowl) that is same diameter with colander, need a lid
Prepare a deeper pot that has a lid for frying
Here is how I do it:
First, heat up oil in the pan. oil actually won’t have the oily smell until it hits 300F, therefore heating with lid on is optional. Once it hits 300F, proceed to frying. Turn on range hood and use splatter guard. Drop in ingredient you want to fry to the frying pot and place the splatter guard on top of it to prevent splattering. Once it’s done, put the strainer on top of your stainless steel container and pour the frying pan over it. After few seconds, when the draining is done, remove the colander and place the lid on your container. If your lid cannot withstand heat, place a plate on top of it until it cool down to close the lid, the reason behind putting on a lid is that hot oil will give out that oily smell.
By doing so, I addressed all the problems I mentioned above. Since I have a splatter guard, it won’t splatter and create a mess. The house will not smell oily since the duration of oil exposes to the open environment is fairly short (from the moment you fry the food to the moment you close the lid). By not using a designated frying pot, we won’t have problem. Frying pot becomes sticky because you reheat oil over and over again in the same pot, giving them enough time to become polymers that is sticky and hard to clean. On top of all the great advantages, you can use the remaining oil in the pot for your next dish. By the end of cooking, you only need to wash the pot, and the colander and you can use the stainless bowl to keep the frying oil for next use. Just a safety reminder, be extremely careful when you pour hot oil. Choose the right pot that is easy to grab and light to handle.
Fry the battered chicken at 300F for 3 minutes or until it’s golden brown, cut open one to check if it’s cooked. Once it’s all fried. Set it aside and let cool for at least 3 min, we are about to finish orange chicken!
With the pot you just used to fry chicken. stir fry the minced garlic in the pot for 20 sec.
Add the sauce mixture, cook about 2 min until it thicken. It smells so great!
Turn off the heat, add the fried chicken in and toss until the sauce evenly cover the chickens. Now your orange chicken is done!
- 1 pound of skinless boneless chicken thigh
- 3 cloves of garlic minced
- 4 cups of oil
- ¼ cup orange juice
- ½ teaspoon orange zest (optional)
- 3 tablespoons of water
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 4 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon of rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 6 tbsp of cake flour
- 2 tbsp of rice flour
- 2 tbsp of cornstarch
- 1 tsp of baking powder
- 1.5 tbsp of oil
- ½ cup of water
- Recipe box
- Mix all sauce ingredient first, set aside for later use
- prepare frying batter by mixing all batter ingredients, set aside for later use
- cube chicken to 1” cubes
- Mix cubed chicken with batter evenly
- heat up a pot with 4 cups of oil to 300F
- Fry batter chicken, drop in one by one carefully to prevent sticking and splashing. Fry for 3 minutes or until golden brown
- Remove and drain the oil, let cool for at least 3 mins
- Use the remainder oil in the pot, stir fry minced garlic for 20 sec
- Add in sauce ingredient and cook until thicken, about 2 min
- Turn off the heat, add in chicken,toss until chicken cubes are evenly coated with sauce
- Enjoy
Where do you add the minced garlic?
The garlic is used as the aromatic for the sauce. Just add oil and then stir fry the garlic a bit before adding the sauce mixture and allow to thicken. ~Mike