Chinese Orange Chicken
Not even Panda Express can beat this homemade orange chicken!
Today was just one of those days. My photography shoot went awry. I burned myself when frying an egg. There was an ant party in my kitchen trash. I hit the worst kind of traffic on a Saturday afternoon for a 3 mile drive. The list goes on.
The highlight of my day was that I still had some of this orange chicken left. This is a Chinese favorite of mine, especially from Panda Express, involving crisp, fried chicken bites smothered in a wonderfully sweet and tangy orange sauce. There is a bit of prep work involved here but at the end of the day, nothing beats homemade, right? And believe me when I say that not even Panda Express will beat this version!
Chinese Orange Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch chunks
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cornstarch, divided
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- ½ teaspoon sesame seeds
- 1 green onion, thinly sliced
For the marinade
- 1 cup chicken broth
- ½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- ½ cup sugar
- ⅓ cup distilled white vinegar
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon orange zest
- 1 teaspoon Sriracha, or more, to taste
- ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon white pepper
Instructions
- To make the marinade, whisk together chicken broth, orange juice, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, orange zest, Sriracha, ginger and white pepper in a large bowl.
- In a gallon size Ziploc bag or large bowl, combine chicken and 2/3 cup of the marinade; marinate for at least 30 minutes, turning the bag occasionally. Drain the chicken from the marinade, discarding the marinade.
- Heat remaining marinade in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir in 2 tablespoons cornstarch combined with 2 tablespoons water. Cook, stirring frequently, until thickened about 1-2 minutes; keep warm.
- Working one at a time, dip the chicken into the eggs, then dredge in remaining 1 cup cornstarch, pressing to coat.
- Heat vegetable oil in a large saucepan. Working in batches, add chicken and fry until golden brown and cooked through, about 1-2 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate; discard excess oil.
- Serve chicken immediately, tossed or drizzled with the marinade, garnished with sesame seeds and green onion, if desired.
Did you make this recipe?
Tag @damn_delicious on Instagram and hashtag it #damndelicious!
I made this last night with chicken thighs b/c that’s what I had on had–I trimmed off the skin and took the meat off the bone then cubed my chicken into bite sized pieces.
I would say the frying time for the chicken, b/c I used thighs, is the most difficult. Its just hard to know if your chicken is cooked all the way through; eventually I settled on 4 minutes for each batch.
The sauce–I think it really makes the dish! But really mince your garlic finely or you will end up with raw pieces of garlic on your finished product. There needs to be more sauce overall, I would probably try to tweak the recipe in the future to make more sauce to pour over my cooked chicken, or reduce the 2/3 of it for the marinade as it was plenty and then some in the ziploc bag.
Great recipe! Thank you!
I’m so glad you gave this a try! One suggestion – you can always press your garlic in order to avoid having huge chunks of garlic pieces in your finished dish.
What kind of vinegar are you using ? Thank you 🙂
Brit, I used distilled white vinegar.
I followed this recipe almost to the letter. I did reduce the vinegar by half as I’m not too fond of the vinegar taste, also reduced the amount of frying oil so that the battered chicken pieces were only half submerged in oil. I also toasted the sesame seeds a little to create an aroma. The final dish came out perfectly! The taste has a bit of everything – tangy, sweet, and spicy. Even better than the restaurant version, just as the author claimed! Thank you for posting this recipe, please keep them coming! 🙂
Thanks so much for the recipe!!! I loved it. I’m trying my leftover marinating chicken in the deep fryer instead of stove top tonight. I can’t wait to try variations of this recipe, I’m doing lime & chili peppers next! Thanks for the inspiration, all your recipes look great!!
Hi,
Just discovered your website and this is the first dish I tried. We had it for dinner tonight, and everyone loved it. It’s a keeper!
Just one small point. You say to fry the chicken pieces for 1 – 2 minutes. My oil (I used peanut oil) was hot, yet after 2 minutes of cooking the chicken was still quite raw. I cut them in 1 inch pieces as per your instructions. I found it took much longer to cook the chicken, about 6 – 7 minutes. I just checked the website for the recipe you adapted this from, and see that the recommended cooking time is 7 minutes. I’m surprised no one else has remarked on this in your comments. I hope they haven’t all been eating undercooked chicken as this is very dangerous! After 6 – 7 minutes my chicken was perfectly cooked. Crisp on the outside, and juicy (but cooked) on the inside. The sauce was delicious! I used cider vinegar which I think adds more depth to the flavour. Thank you for this delicious recipes. Tomorrow I will be making your sriracha salmon.
Anne, this really depends on several factors, such as how thick or thin your chicken pieces are and how hot your oil is. Your oil should be at about 300-350 degrees F. With that kind of heat, cooking the chicken for 6-7 minutes would result in completely overcooking the chicken and making it incredibly rubbery.
Hi Chung-Ah,
Thank you for replying. My oil was heated to 350 degrees and my chicken breast was cut in 1 inch cubes as per your instructions. I marinated the chicken for one hour. I am wondering why the website you adapted this recipe from says to cook it for 7 minutes and you say 1 – 2 minutes. My chicken, after 6 minutes was still juicy and tender, and the battery was crispy. After cutting into a piece after two minutes of cooking, it was visibly pink and undercooked in the centre. I don’t mean to criticize but I am very concerned that some novice cooks will not check the chicken for doneness, toss it in the sauce and eat it, thus risking getting sick. Undercooked chicken is very dangerous.
Anne, I understand and appreciate your concerns but as you can see from the comments here, a lot of people have tried my tested recipe, followed my instructions, and have had amazing results. But as mentioned before, if your oil is not hot enough or if your chicken pieces are not entirely all that small, people will have to make adjustments accordingly.
This recipe was SUPER and we were fighting over the left overs today for lunch. One we can’t wait to make again! I did want to share that I too had a longer cooking time with my chicken pieces – which were all to your specs, too (size, marinade time…etc). Ours maybe even longer than 7 minutes with the oil at the right temp. Even with that, they were juicy and crsipy…etc. Honestly, I thought nothing of it last night – just blamed it on my pan not conducting evenly or well enough:)
Ironically, I also used Peanut Oil instead of Vegetable Oil….perhaps Peanut Oil has a unique impact on the frying time? I am more curious than anything…it would not prevent me from making this again, either way — IT WAS THAT GOOD!!!
I made this today. The flavor was great. My question is how do you fry the chicken and have it turn out smooth and not lumpy? I don’t fry things often, so I guess I just need some good pointers.
Kristy, a little bit of “lumpiness” is actually normal!
Wow made this for dinner tonight, used a chilli and garlic sauce as no Sriracha that I could easily find in New Zealand, but was delicious! Will definitely be making this again, thanks for the recipe 🙂
I made this for the first time and my family flipped for it! I used red pepper flakes because I didn’t have sriracha, and it gave it some heat. Cut up and marinated the chicken the night before, so when I got home from work, I just breaded and cooked the chicken, made a veggie and rice and finished the sauce! It was fantastic!
Can you use olive oil instead of vegetable oil? Great recipe by the way! Can’t wait to try it out soon!
Unfortunately, due to the difference in smoking points, olive oil is not an appropriate substitute.
I tried the recipe yesterday – I used beef broth instead of chicken, tabasco instead of sriracha and skipped the orange zest (I was too lazy to go to the store, so I used orange juice from a brick).
It was really delicious! I had to coat the chicken pieces in starch twice (the first pieces had started to absorb the starch while I was coating the others) – the result was extra-crispiness! I will definitely make more of these soon.
I was not real crazy about this recipe. I expected it to be a little sweeter. Maybe because I used coconut sugar instead of the white. Maybe next time I’ll use unpasteurized honey. I will also use a bit more orange zest. My husband really liked it and found no problems with it and said it was perfect.. So tonight, I’m trying ‘quinoa stuffed bell peppers.’ Thanks for the recipes. Sheila
Sheila, I recommend using the listed ingredients to obtain optimal results. If certain ingredients are substituted, I cannot speak for the change in flavor/texture of this dish.
Hands down, ah maaaay zing! It has just the right amount of orange to the taste for you to appreciate, but not so much so that it becomes overwhelming.
A few things I’m going to change the next I work on this, though, are:
a) Let the chicken marinade for longer than 30 minutes. Even with the marination, my folks said that the chicken sans sauce had no taste to it.
b) Before frying the chicken, I’m going to coat them all with eggs/cornstarch to save time rather than fry a few ,then coat a few, then fry a few. Also, frying does not take 1-2 minutes and cannot all be done in one frying (no matter how big you think your saucepan is…unless you’ve got pro chef gear), so time accordingly.
I’m just sharing this for my fellow first-time chefs and the “but I make cereal really well” kinda folks. A few other pointers to keep in mind when cooking this:
a) When mixing corn starch for the sauce, be sure to mix the starch in cold water instead of hot/lukewarm! It must be cold, trust me guys. I had to make it twice so. Some science-y thing to it.
b) Also, what I did, and I felt this made a difference, was that with the sauce cooking (after adding the cornstarch), I added the green onions to cook for a minute, and then I added the pre-cooked chicken to give it more flavor.
All in all, family left the dining table happy, so this recipe is gonna stage a comeback soon in my household.
Thanks for sharing the recipe, Chung-Ah! Happy eatings (:
When you call for vinegar, do you use white vinegar or something more flavorful like apple cider vinegar? I use apple cider vinegar for making a sauce for sweet-n-sour chicken, so I am wondering if it would be good in this recipe.
Amanda, white vinegar was used for this recipe. You can use apple cider vinegar but I cannot speak for how much this was will change the taste of this dish.
Has anyone tried making this in the crock pot?
Just made this and it is great this is my second thing from this website that I have made so far (the first was Mac and cheese) and so far I am really impressed. I did add orange extract and a little more soy sauce to this recipe.
Delish! I made this for the family tonight and my kids devoured it (5, 3, 18mos)!
It’s nice to find something not loaded with sodium or msg to enjoy at home for a fraction of the cost. Thanks! I’m sooo glad that I found your blog. Going to add some other recipes to this month’s menu plan!
This looks absolutely divine! I will definitely try this recipe very soon, like tomorrow! One question: Does it matter if I use powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar for the marinade? The reason why I ask is because powdered sugar contains cornstarch (at least the package I have does) and I wonder if this would alter the taste/consistency of the chicken.
Thanks!
Vic, I honestly can’t say if the powdered sugar will alter the texture/taste of this dish. I do recommend using granulated sugar as noted in the recipe for optimal results.
The only thing that was good about this was the marinade. The breading fell off almost every piece. I had to use flour on a few since the cornstarch wasn’t sticking. Though that didn’t seem to help either.
Panda express from here on out! To heck with cooking! Lol
Cloyd, the breading should stay on during the cooking process. I recommend really coating the chicken pieces in the egg before dreding in the cornstarch. It is is normal for some breading to come off. I hope that helps!
This tastes really good (I’m eating as I type)! The only problem I had is that most of the breading came off the chicken pieces when I fried them. I am pretty sure I followed your directions faithfully. Any suggestions to help the breading stay on next time?
I suggest making sure that the chicken is completely dipped in the eggs before dredging in the cornstarch. Hope that helps!
I was browsing recipes for orange chicken and came across this, thank goodness. It was Devine! I didn’t change anything just added steamed broccoli and shredded carrots and shook it with the sauce and chicken. Will be making this again!