Homemade Orange Chicken

Chicken breast in a tangy, sweet, sticky sauce is my favorite thing to pile onto rice for a quick dinner at home. Grab some chopsticks and let’s go!

Orange Chicken is one of those classic dishes that you find at American-Chinese restaurants, and it’s a super-popular one at places like Panda Express. I like to make it at home though because then I don’t do the heavy-tasting breading. It’s just nice and light chicken breast pieces in the sweet, sticky, tangy sauce – perfect for doing a Friday night take-out at home.

Is Orange Chicken Chinese?

The answer is, not really. Like General Tso’s Chicken, Orange Chicken is an Americanized version of the sweet and sour dishes that are found in China, but you wouldn’t really find either of them in restaurants there. Moreover, it likely wouldn’t even be recognizable as Chinese food to people in China. You can read more about the history of Orange Chicken and how the version that we know and love today was created by Panda Express over here.

Having said that, Orange Chicken has become a staple at American-Chinese restaurants, which really has become a cuisine of its own. I really enjoyed this episode of The Splendid Table with Hong Kong-raised chef Lucas Sin of Junzi Kitchen and Nice Day. The part about how modern American-Chinese restaurants are set up and the history of this style of family business is really fascinating, and speaks to me because of my own history of growing up in my family’s restaurants, Ukrainian ones though, not Chinese.

How To Make Orange Chicken

This at-home version of orange chicken starts with bite-sized pieces of chicken being salted and then sitting for a bit so the salt can make them extra tender. While they’re resting you make a quick orange sauce and get some garnishes ready. Then, you coat the chicken in a bit of cornstarch for a crust, and so the sauce will stick to it better later.

Sauté the chicken pieces in a bit of oil, and then add the sauce. Bring it to a simmer and watch it thicken and get glossy. Transfer the fully-cooked chicken and sauce to a serving bowl and top with sesame seeds and green onion.

That’s really it! It comes together really quickly and easily, and tastes amazing! Now, here are some more details about some of the steps.

If you’d like to make Orange Chicken using the Air Fryer instead of the stovetop, check out my Air Fryer Orange Chicken over here.

How To Make Extra Juicy Chicken Breast Pieces

The key to making the chicken breast extra juicy and tender is to cut it into bite-sized pieces and then salt it with quite a bit of salt and let it sit for 10 minutes before cooking. This essentially does a quick dry-brine to the chicken which really makes a difference.

Then you’ll toss the chicken in a bit of cornstarch before cooking it. That adds a bit of a coating to the chicken, and I suspect it also protects it from the heat a bit so that the outside of the meat doesn’t dry out. Whenever I do cornstarch like this, I find that the chicken is more tender in the end.

How To Make Orange Chicken Sauce

The sauce for this dish is super-simple. It’s just orange juice, soy sauce (or tamari, which is gluten-free soy sauce with a fuller flavor than soy sauce, I find), ground ginger, garlic powder, crushed red pepper flakes for a bit of spicy heat, and honey. There’s also some cornstarch in there to thicken it and give it that glossy texture we all know from Asian-style orange sauce.

There are other recipes online that have other ingredients in this sauce. A lot of them call for orange zest, for instance. But when I’ve tested it, I’ve found that the zest adds a lot of bitterness.

Many recipes also call for rice wine vinegar. That tends to make the sauce more sour, and then it needs a lot of sugar or honey to counter it. By removing the vinegar, the ingredient list is shorter, but also, we get to put less sugar in the sauce.

As to the ground ginger and the garlic powder, you can absolutely use fresh minced garlic and fresh minced ginger in there. When I use those, I add them to the chicken in the frying pan for about 30 seconds before stirring in the sauce. You’ll use two cloves of minced garlic and 1 teaspoon of minced ginger. I will say though that with all the other flavors going on, I can’t really tell the difference between the fresh and the ground. It therefore saves time and energy to just measure from the jar than to start peeling and chopping things.

One final tip about making the sauce. I like to combine it all in a microwave-safe 1-cup measuring cup. Everything except the honey, that is. If you add the honey right in there, it doesn’t fully mix in. Instead, put the other ingredients in there, and then microwave it for 30 seconds, give it a stir. Then microwave it for another 30 seconds and stir. At that point, get out your tablespoon measure and add honey to it. Dip the spoon into your warmed liquid and stir. The honey will come off of the spoon and melt in. Repeat the measuring and stirring until you have added the 3 tablespoons of honey. The honey will all be mixed in, and your spoon won’t have honey still clinging to it!

Note, that the recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of honey. You can taste it after adding the honey to see if you’d like it sweeter. I only like mine moderately sweet. It will taste a bit odd because of the uncooked cornstarch, but you can totally get a sense of the sweetness level. Note also that at this point the liquid will not be thick and will be cloudy. Don’t worry, once it gets added to the chicken and comes to a simmer, it will thicken and get that nice glossy texture.

The Garnishes For Orange Chicken

So, you’re going to set that chicken to rest with the salt on it for about 10 minutes. While that is sitting there, it’s a great time to whisk together the sauce. You can also get some garnishes ready.

I like to toast some sesame seeds. To do that, get out a small skillet and put it over medium-low heat. Add the sesame seeds and let them cook for a minute then stir. Continue to cook and stir until they’re starting to brown in places. At that point, immediately transfer them to a bowl. That stops them from cooking. If you leave them in the pan, even off the heat, the residual heat in the pan will continue to cook the seeds and they can end up quite bitter.

I also like to garnish this dish with sliced green onions. So get those out and chop them while the chicken is resting.

If you’re making rice to have with your Chinese Orange Chicken, you can make it in the Instant Pot like this. I’d start the rice immediately after salting the chicken. If you’re cooking the rice on the stove, I’d start it right before you salt the chicken. Either way, the rice will be done a bit before the chicken and sauce are ready. The Instant Pot will keep the rice at just the right temperature on the Keep Warm setting until you’re ready. For the stovetop rice, when it’s ready, take it off the heat and fluff it with a fork. Put the lid back on and leave it. It will stay just right for a good 10 minutes.

I hope you love this simple but flavorful dish as much as I do. Enjoy! -Christine xo

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