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Our Easy Asian Orange Chicken is the perfect faux takeout meal if you love takeout but can’t find a good takeout place near your house!
Table of Contents
- Creating This Homemade Orange Chicken Recipe
- Chinese Orange Chicken Ingredients
- How to Make Orange Chicken
- How to Reheat Orange Chicken
- Can You Freeze Orange Chicken?
- Can I Use a Skillet Instead of a Wok?
- What to Serve With Orange Chicken
- Tips for Making the Best Orange Chicken
- More Easy Asian Recipes:
- Easy Asian Orange Chicken Recipe
Creating This Homemade Orange Chicken Recipe
I love sauces. I love dipping sauces, marinating meats in sauces, and more. It’s just so delicious. A few weeks back, we hosted my brother-in-law’s birthday bash at our house. It was so much fun and there was so much good food.
His family has an Chinese orange chicken recipe that all of the kids just love, but it has nothing orange in it, so I decided to make a real orange chicken. We actually ended up loving both the pretend orange chicken and the real deal so both recipes were keepers!
Chinese Orange Chicken Ingredients
Don’t let the ingredients list intimidate you, this orange chicken recipe is incredibly easy to make! For the homemade orange chicken itself, you’ll need boneless skinless chicken breasts, all-purpose flour, an egg, salt and pepper, and oil for frying the chicken in.
Where this Chinese orange chicken gets all of its flavor is the orange chicken sauce. For the sauce, you’ll need orange juice and zest, rice vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, fresh ginger, garlic, red pepper flakes, cornstarch, and water.
The orange chicken sauce isn’t hard to make at all. It’s so saucy and goes so well with chicken. In fact, it’s so good I’m starting to think that salmon might be a great way to go as well. Has anyone tried that?
How to Make Orange Chicken
Although homemade orange chicken involves deep frying, it’s not complicated to make and takes less than an hour to finish. Here are the basic steps for making orange chicken at home:
- Dredge the diced chicken pieces in beaten egg, then seasoned flour.
- Deep fry the chicken in oil that’s 375ºF.
- In a small saucepan, combine all of the orange chicken sauce ingredients but the water and cornstarch and bring to a boil.
- Once boiling, create a cornstarch slurry and mix it into the orange chicken sauce to thicken it.
- Pour the sauce over the deep fried chicken pieces and enjoy!
Can You Bake Orange Chicken?
You can bake Asian orange chicken, but you’ll want to omit the flour breading since it doesn’t turn out as well when it’s baked instead of fried. Instead, if you want to bake our easy orange chicken just use the breading on our Sesame Chicken recipe and proceed with the orange chicken sauce as normal.
How to Reheat Orange Chicken
If you have leftover homemade orange chicken, do NOT reheat it in the microwave. That will make the chicken rubbery and the breading will lose its crispness. Instead, reheat the orange chicken in a skillet with a little olive or canola oil over medium heat. It won’t taste quite as good as when you first made it, but it’ll still be tasty!
Can You Freeze Orange Chicken?
If you’re using the baked recipe, you can freeze orange chicken. Make sure you freeze it in a single layer on a pan before putting it in a freezer-safe bag. As always, we really do prefer to use our Food Saver that we got off of Amazon with the starter kit. It sucks out all of the air and the food stays so fresh you can’t tell it was frozen.
When you’re ready to reheat, just defrost the chicken on a dish in the fridge with plastic wrap laid over the top, then bake with a little drizzle of oil over the tops of the chicken. Remember, this is just for the chicken, not the sauce.
To freeze the orange chicken sauce, let it cool completely before placing it in a freezer bag and pressing out any air. Lay it on a flat surface, not a surface with a wire rack, otherwise you need to use a pan under it as it will sink into the bars and then freeze making it super hard to remove from the freezer.
Can I Use a Skillet Instead of a Wok?
Also note that you don’t need a deep fryer or a wok to make this recipe. A regular skillet with tall sides will work too. To test when the oil is hot enough, stick the end of a wooden spoon into the oil; if tiny bubbles immediately form around the wood, the oil is the right temperature.
What to Serve With Orange Chicken
Don’t worry if you’re wondering what to serve your Chinese orange chicken with, I’ve got you covered! A few of our favorite sides to serve with this homemade orange chicken include:
- Ham Fried Rice
- White rice
- A simple side salad
- Garlic Roasted Veggies (minus the Parmesan)
Tips for Making the Best Orange Chicken
For the best flavor, I highly recommend using freshly squeezed orange juice for this orange chicken recipe. Since you’ll be using orange zest as well, you might as well buy a few extra oranges and use their juice for this Chinese chicken recipe.
If you really can’t be bothered to squeeze all the juice out by hand, a good alternative is Simply Orange Juice. It’s made with real fruit juice and contains no additional sweeteners.
Lastly, you may have extra orange chicken sauce (it really just depends on how saucy you like your chicken). If you wind up with leftover sauce, you can reuse it on baked chicken, seafood, and more! It’s really versatile and tastes good on almost any protein.
More Easy Asian Recipes:
- 15-Minute Chicken Stir Fry
- Simple Asian Shrimp Noodles
- Asian Chicken Skewers with Honey Garlic Sauce
- Pork Dumplings
- Easy Cashew Chicken
- Teriyaki Chicken Noodles
- Sweet and Spicy Orange Salmon
- Grilled Sweet and Sour Chicken
- Peanut Sauce Noodles with Chicken
- …All of Our Asian Recipes!
Easy Asian Orange Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 ½ Cups All Purpose Flour
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- ¼ teaspoon Pepper
- 1 Egg, beaten
- 2 lbs Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts, cut into 1-1/2” cubes
- Oil, for frying
Orange Sauce
- 1 ½ Cups Orange Juice and Zest from One Orange
- 1/3 Cup Rice Vinegar
- 2 ½ Tablespoons Soy Sauce
- 1 Cup Packed Brown Sugar
- ½ teaspoon Ginger Root, minced
- ½ teaspoon Garlic, minced
- 3 Tablespoons Cornstarch
- 2 Tablespoons Water
- ¼ teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes
Instructions
- Combine flour, salt, and pepper.1 ½ Cups All Purpose Flour, ¼ teaspoon Pepper, ¼ teaspoon Salt
- Dip chicken in egg mixture and shake in flour mixture to coat.1 Egg, 2 lbs Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
- Deep fry chicken in batches at 375 degrees in a deep fryer (or use a wok) until completely cooked.Oil
- Meanwhile, in a large saucepan combine orange juice, rice vinegar, and soy sauce.1 ½ Cups Orange Juice and Zest from One Orange, 1/3 Cup Rice Vinegar, 2 ½ Tablespoons Soy Sauce
- Blend well over medium heat for a few minutes.
- Stir in brown sugar, orange zest, ginger and garlic. Bring to a boil.1 ½ Cups Orange Juice and Zest from One Orange, 1 Cup Packed Brown Sugar, ½ teaspoon Ginger Root, ½ teaspoon Garlic
- Combine 3 tablespoons of cornstarch with 1/4 cup of water and mix thoroughly.3 Tablespoons Cornstarch, 2 Tablespoons Water
- Slowly stir cornstarch mixture into sauce until it thickens.
- Pour sauce over breaded chicken, and if desired add red pepper flakes.¼ teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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This looks so good! Unfortunately I don’t have a wok or deep fryer. Do you think I could bake the chicken first to make sure it’s done, coat it in the egg mix, and then fry it?
Hi Kassi, You can just use a regular deep sided skillet. 🙂 I probably wouldn’t bake it first.
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First off, this was delicious, and I will definitely make it again.
But…
A recipe that involves deep frying isn’t “Easy”, pretty much by definition. Not that deep frying is difficult, but it requires a thermometer to know when the oil is hot enough, it’s messy because of spatter, and there’s a lot of oil to dispose of afterwards. Not to mention that cooking in batches increases cooking time and you have to do something with the first batch to keep it warm while the second is frying.
Also, the way this is written would be a TON of sauce for 2 lbs of chicken. I used about 3.5 lbs of chicken, made the sauce recipe as written (almost) and have sauce left over. And with a full cup of sugar this would be way too sweet, for me at least. I halved it and it was plenty sweet enough.
Third, the way that the recipe lists “1 ½ cups orange juice and zest from one orange” is confusing. At first I was like, “where on earth are you getting oranges that have a cup and a half of juice in them?” Then I realized you meant that the orange juice and zest are separate ingredients — they really should be listed separately. I ended up juicing four oranges to get 1.5 cups of juice, and I put in the zest from all of them. 🙂 I used two tbsp of cornstarch rather than three and the sauce was quick thick.
The sauce was terrific in the end, and the chicken (I used thighs instead of breasts by the way) was great, juicy inside and crispy outside.
One easy way to tell when your oil is ready, is to put the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil and if it bubbles around it, the oil is hot enough.
Yes, that’s just what my mother taught me!
I really love blogs…. Thanks for sharing with us.
What is the serving size on this recipe please. I am trying to work out the nutritional information. Thanks so much.
Hi Jan, the serving size would be about 5.5 or 5.6 ounces.
This looks really good and I love Orange Chicken! Do you have any nutritional information on this recipe? I have to watch my calories and salt/sugar intake.
Hi Teysha, I don’t know the nutritional information, but I’m sure there is an online calculator.
This is the best orange chicken I’ve ever had!! I will never order takeout again. I reduced the brown sugar to half and it still was delish.
I’m so glad!! We love it too but sometimes I get so caught up in creating recipes I forget to go back to the basics. Thanks for the reminder to make this asap!
I made this yesterday and it is soooooooooo delicious! I havn’t had orange chicken in years and now i can make a yummy version anytime i want. Thanks for this recipe!
I’m so happy to hear that! I’m working on a few other faux takeout recipes I’m excited about too!
Made this tonight for dinner tonight and it was AMAZING!!! Followed the instructions to the dot except I pan fried the chicken, came out great!!
Oh, I bet pan fried chicken was delicious too! I’ll try that next time. Thanks Jeanine!
In the recipe it calls for 1 1/2 cups orange juice, and then in the instructions it says to add 1 1/2 cups water to the orange juice, soy sauce etc. are you diluting the Orange juice even more?
Hi Michelle, that’s an error from the old recipe. I’ve removed it and thank you for double checking.