Legit Orange Chicken 🇨🇳 🍊 🐓
Upgrading a Delivery-Classic
Greetings Friends, 🥂
One of the most satisfying parts of cooking more at home is being able to upgrade foods that you used to go out to eat (or order in with delivery).
Going out to eat can be enjoyable, communal and fun. However, as stated before, with rising costs, in-person dining restrictions and seed oils permeating every kitchen the ideal is to be eating most of your meals at home
We’ve already seen how we can upgrade Pizza 🍕 at Home 🙌
At this point, ordering delivery now is just a huge, seed-oil laden, greasy disappointment. (Check past Substack on making the best pizza at home ⬇️ )
So today let’s upgrade an American-Chinese cult classic… claimed to be invented by Panda 🐼 Express:
Orange Chicken 🍊 🐓
The Setup:
So where did Orange Chicken come from?
Anyone who knows anything about Chinese food is familiar with the popular “Sweet & Sour” style dishes. These descend from authentic preparations in Mainland China where dishes like Tangerine Chicken, in Hunan, were developed for their Sweet/Spicy/Sour flavor profiles; citrus peels being an important part of Chinese Medicine.
In the 1960’s/70’s with an influx of Chinese 🇨🇳 restaurants opening across the US 🇺🇸 , a new style of Chinese Food, now referred to as American-Chinese Food became extremely popular. This style emphasizes sweeter flavors, light-to no spice and deep frying. This is when the iconic General Tso’s Chicken was transplanted from Taiwan 🇹🇼 and rose to popularity in the 1980’s (and still is today).
From General Tso’s, the Panda Express Orange Chicken was inspired and born. Chef Andy Kao claims to have developed the original recipe at a Panda Express in Hawaii in 1987.
The popular dish consists of chopped, battered and fried chicken pieces. After frying, the chicken is coated in a sweet orange-flavored chili sauce, which is slightly thickened to glaze the chicken pieces.
So Why Make Orange Chicken at Home?
Let me be frank… once you make this recipe you will never want to order this from a drive-thru or UberEats again.
Let’s walk through some known issues you have when ordering “The Original”
Soggy-
99% of the time, the Orange Chicken you receive will have been sitting under a heat lamp, or packed in a to-go container… just steaming away and getting soggy. This isn’t optimal. On top of that, Panda Express uses a blended flour batter. We are going to use a trick to get light, crisp, succulent chicken that is perfect (and gluten-free)!
Sweet-
The Original is too sweet. Yes, I said it. We know that most prepared foods now are skewed to a palate that craves “sweet”. By making this at home we can dial in the perfect blend of sweet, salty, sour, bitter and spice.
Spice-
Panda Express Orange chicken has no discernible spice whatsoever. You’ll see in the recipe below that some chili 🌶 presence, even in small doses, does wonders for rounding out the flavors. I like more, but if you’re feeding a group you can just add extra chili 🌶 to yours 😉
Frying-
Fried foods are problematic when eating out for a variety of reasons: 1) Most always is a seed oil, 2) age of oil, 3) overcrowding and maintaining the fryer temperature are all odds stacked against you from getting the optimum result.
Frying at home is hassle-free and all the variables are in your control. Just need a pot and a thermometer. See a previous Substack going in detail on Frying and Pointers for Frying at Home.
Two things are for sure…
If you've been disappointed with Orange Chicken previously, prepare to be converted.
If you love orange chicken already, prepare for a new nirvana!
So here’s a bulletproof recipe with tips and explanations why they work… Let’s cook!
