Orange Chicken Recipe — another $10 or under dinner idea!
[ Click above to embiggen: I took a photo of the orange chicken in the pan when it was done the last time I made this, and that's how it looks when the dish is finished. I think the yellow and orange peppers not only give the dish crunch but also add a visual element that brings home the "orange" in the chicken...and I like the whole pieces of orange segment that are scattered around the pan to give little bursts of orange flavor when eaten. You can see the seasoning on the chicken from when it was broiled, which is a peppery taste I like as an extra addition to the flavor profile. ]
Orange Chicken is my boyfriend Justin’s favorite dinner…but over time I evolved it from what’s typically found in Chinese restaurants so it’s also a little bit French “a l’orange” too. I also added a lot more color in the form of yellow and orange bell peppers and made it healthier than normal by not using anything fried (the way Chinese restaurants typically bread and then fry chicken for this dish). A lot of time I’ll have something in a restaurant and come home and try to make it for us in our apartment…and then I’ll change the things I didn’t like about the restaurant version and amp up the parts of it that Justin and I loved the most. It is a creative license that all cooks use…and it’s also a way to make things similar to what you like when you eat out but with whatever you happen to usually have in your kitchen.
When I make Orange Chicken, there’s enough for three meals for Justin and myself:
1. The first night we eat this over brown rice
2. The second day, we have an orange chicken sandwich (by just slicing open and toasting some baguette and then adding the orange chicken cold as a sandwich filling…you can heat it up too, if you want, but it’s great cold).
3. The last day I make us Orange Chicken lettuce cups by just using the leftovers as the filling of lettuce cups (literally, peeling off large leafs from a head of iceberg lettuce and then adding the warm orange chicken to it).
Ingredients:
* Chicken breasts (when I make it for Justin and myself, I buy one of the big Value Packs of chicken that have between 6-7 breasts; since this lasts us for 3 days I think if you want to make it for just one night then use only 2 breasts…but it’s more cost effective to just make a 3-day batch).
* Oranges (you can use fresh or canned Mandarin oranges…or clementines if you’d rather use tangerines…the little “cuties” oranges they have in the fall are nice too).
* Bag of colored peppers (you should have this where you live…a bag in the produce aisle that has orange, yellow, and red peppers in it; use the orange and yellow ones for this dish and leave the red ones for something else another day or for snacks later).
* Orange marmalade (for the sauce)
* Your favorite kind of Asian-style sauce (I use whatever’s cheapest at the store: Panda Express Orange Chicken Sauce…Safeway Brand’s Sesame Orange Sauce…or any other Orange Sauce in the Asian foods aisle at your store).
* Brown rice (or the rice you like)
I think what’s fun about making Orange Chicken this way is that there’s a lot of flexibility to get into your own groove; you can really put your own personal spin on this, particularly when it comes to the sauce.
How to Make It:
Step One: I start the chicken off first, because that takes the longest. This is especially true if you are making the chicken in your Crock Pot (in which case, just do that the way you normally do and when the chicken is ready just pull it apart with your fork so it’s in bite-sized chunks). I only recently acquired a Crock Pot and have always made the chicken in the oven at 350 degrees for as long as it takes to cook it. Before it goes into the oven, I sprinkle it with Lemon Pepper seasoning from Grill Mates (but you can use any seasoning you like for the chicken…I just think the lemon pepper spice is nice later on with the orange flavors). I also add a little chicken broth to the broiling pan and then cover it for the first half of cooking.
Step Two: Make the brown rice. It takes forever, depending on the kind you get. The good thing is that the Orange Chicken can wait for the rice to be done if your timing is off. The final Orange Chicken dish actually tastes even better if it has time to rest and for the flavors to develop.
Step Three: Notice that I don’t cut the chicken up into little pieces before it’s cooked. That’s largely because I think doing that is gross and it always leads to a giant mess. So, I cook the chicken breasts first and when they are done I cut them up into little pieces for the Orange Chicken. When I took Chinese in school my teacher told us that the reason food in Chinese culture is cut into small pieces is so that knives do not need to be placed on the dinner table; this is supposedly because the war lords and feuding generals wouldn’t want anyone to have a knife handy at dinner time to make trouble…so all the necessary cutting was done in the kitchen. I like making food bite-size as much as possible because it means washing less silverware later. It also makes it so much easier to portion food and also set things aside for later. The chicken’s pretty much doing its own thing for a while while it cooks so I do the other stuff I need to do while this is going on.
Step Four: This is when I make the sauce for the chicken. In a large pan on the stove I plop four large, heaping tablespoons of the orange marmalade. This will add sweetness to the sauce and will also eventually coat random pieces of chicken with orange peel that’s in the marmalade. This saves me from having to zest oranges and try to get that orange peel myself. The marmalade does all that for me, which is awesome. Once the marmalade is in the pan, I then pour in some of the Panda Express orange sauce or the Safeway brand orange ginger sauce. I buy these when they are on sale and so there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll be using one or the other every time I make this. The price point for buying the sauce is when it’s $2.99 or so…which happens at least once a month for either of them. Sometimes, Dominick’s (which sells the Safeway store brands) has the sauces 2 for $3…and then I stock up. The reason I add the marmalade to the sauce is because I don’t think the orange sauces out there have enough orange flavor to them…but I also don’t like Orange Chicken without the pungent tang of the Chinese style sauces. Without that tang, then the dish tastes too much like chicken a l’orange (which isn’t a bad thing, per se, but it’s not Chinese style then). The sauce part of this dish is where you can really tailor things to your taste. Adding more marmalade makes the sauce sweeter and more orange-flavored…but adding more of the Panda Express or Safeway prepared sauce makes it more tangy and savory. It’s up to you what you like best.
Step Five: I turn the flame on very low for the sauce while I head over to chop up the orange and yellow peppers. Cut the tops off first (where the stem is) and then slice them all in half so you can scoop out the seeds. Then I cut them so they are little square shapes. I don’t like using long slender strips of peppers for Orange Chicken and think the little square pieces look nicer in the final dish. When you’ve got them all chopped up, add them to the sauce in the pan on the stove.
Step Six: Let the peppers simmer a little but turn the fire off if they start getting too much heat. You want them to be somewhat crunchy so they add a nice texture to the finished dish…and not cooked all the way through.
Step Seven: When the chicken is done, take it out of the oven and cut it up into little pieces. This is where if you’ve used a Crock Pot instead you can just pull the chicken apart with a fork into pieces and then you add it to the pan with the sauce and the peppers. I like to add the chicken into the pan a few pieces at a time and then stir everything around…then add more chicken…stir some more…etc. until all the chicken is added and everything is evenly coated with sauce. There’s no need to have too much sauce because the flavors will be very strong. I swear it took me like 30 years to learn this, but less sauce is actually better. Let the flavors of the chicken and the oranges and the peppers come through and not have everything drowned in sauce. If food is a superhero, then sauce is the cape…the cool accent that makes everything soar, but not an oppressive burqa that hides the food underneath from the world. Once everything has been stirred together, I turn the flame on high for a few minutes which makes the sauce stick to the chicken and for the whole thing to have a cohesive flavor. I stir everything around a few more times and then I let it all rest for 5 minutes.
Step Eight: While the Orange Chicken is resting, I peel roughly 2 oranges and divide them into segments…then I cut each segment into half if it’s a big orange. Justin is a very picky eater, so I have to make sure all the white tendons from inside the orange are removed and the segments are all clean. If you are using Mandarin oranges from a can, then just drain them of their juice and add them to the Orange Chicken that’s cooling on the stove as-is. If you are using small tangerines or little “cuties” oranges, then use about 4 of them. I like putting them on top of the Orange Chicken at the end so that they absorb the warmth from the food around it but they don’t cook and don’t burst (as they would if you added them when there was a flame under the pan). I like the orange pieces to be whole like this because they add little flavor explosions here and there when you’re eating the dish later. I always make sure people get an even helping of the orange pieces when I dish up the food into the bowls and I save a few orange pieces for garnish on the plate too. Presentation really is a big part of any meal. You can make the most inexpensive food taste “expensive” by just elevating your presentation a little and always making sure you have at least three different colors in every plating (in this case, I have yellow and orange from the peppers and then the white of the chicken…and I’m tempted to serve this dish on a plate with broccoli or green beans sometimes because I love having that brilliant green color on there too). Food really is art, and when you are cooking you are an in-house Picasso.
Step Nine: Before I plate anything up, I clean all the pans and dishes I used to make the meal and all the utensils that got dirty up to this point. This way there’s no mess later for me to deal with after we eat.
Step Ten: I dish up the brown rice (which I planned to be ready right now) and then on top of it I add the Orange Chicken: one bowl for Justin and one bowl for me. I then divide the remaining Orange Chicken that’s in the pan into two separate bowls: one for tomorrow’s cold sandwich version of this dish and the other for the day after’s lettuce cups. The only thing I’ll need to stretch this meal over three days instead of one is a French baguette and a head of lettuce. I’ve found that dividing the remainder after I’ve plated up dinner that first night is the best way to stretch what I’ve made over the next two days because I’m not relying on something being “leftover” since the plan was always to do that stretching from the beginning. This is also a way to portion control if you are watching your food intake so you don’t overeat.
Neither Justin nor I use chopsticks and we just eat this with a fork. I make a hot tea to drink with it, like I’d get at a Chinese restaurant, but Justin likes his Diet Orange pop. Another fun thing you could do is add a little orange juice to a glass of club soda and you could make a bubbly orange drink to complement the chicken dish. I don’t drink anymore, but if I did I’d serve this with Blue Moon or another such beer that has an orange-y zing to it. I think a wine that would be nice with this is a Riesling because of its sharp sweetness. Another good pairing is an Italian Prosecco, which some people think is just for the summer time but is super cheap in the fall and winter as a result of that misconception. A sparkling Prosecco with some orange chicken is a very nice combination for people who enjoy alcohol in moderation.
I really don’t like ordering Orange Chicken from Chinese restaurants since I started making my own version because they fry their chicken and bread it, which are two things I avoid by roasting the chicken in the oven (or cooking it in the Crock Pot). I also like the crunchiness that the bell peppers add to my version…which Chinese restaurants don’t do. Even though I do like Panda Express’s Orange Chicken and its sauce, I miss the vegetables that I put in mine and I also like the extra orange flavor that the marmalade brings. A few times I tried making this dish with carrots in addition to the peppers, but it was overkill in my opinion. The carrots also had a weird flavor with all the orange notes around them…so while I do add carrots to the Hawaiian chicken I make, I don’t put the carrots in my Orange Chicken. You can try them if you like, or if you can’t find any orange or yellow bell peppers…but I think you’ll find that the carrots are weird in this.
What I love most about making this Orange Chicken is how CHEAP it ends up being; there’s a Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood that we love called Ping Pong, but we can’t walk out of that place without spending at least $50 for the two of us for one meal. Here, I can make a better version of Orange Chicken that feeds us for three days for less than half that price.
Cost of Ingredients:
Here’s the list of ingredients and what they cost to make Orange Chicken in Chicago the last time I made it (November 2012):
* Chicken Value Pack: 7 breasts of chicken for $12
* Oranges: “Cuties” box of little oranges for $6 (and I used about $1 worth of the oranges by taking three of them for the dish) = $1
* Pack of Colorful Peppers: $5 (and I used 2/3 of them, so about $3.50 worth of yellow and orange peppers) = $3.50
* Marmalade: $3 (and it’s enough to make this dish three times, using 1/3 of the marmalade each time…so one use is about $1) = $1
* Panda Express Orange Chicken Sauce: $4 (and I used 1/3 of it, so each bottle is good for making this dish three times)= $1.50
* Brown Rice: $1 (I used the Uncle Ben’s quick-brown rice that comes in a big pack of around 5 bags…so I think this was about $1 each) = $1
So, that was a total of $20 and the Orange Chicken will be used for 3 meals, so that’s less than $7 for the first night’s meal. The next day’s sandwich bread costs $2, so that’s about $8 for that meal…and the lettuce head is $2 or so, so that’s another $8 for the third day. That’s $23 to feed two men for three days.
We’ll actually eat the cuties oranges and the leftover red peppers as snacks for the next two days, too, so nothing will go to waste. The sauce and the marmalade leftover will be used the next time I make orange chicken. Between Justin and I, we’ll finish off the French bread and the lettuce head the day we eat those meals…so yet again we reach my goal of bringing dinners in under $10 and only throwing away plastic bags and packaging into the garbage and never, ever wasting or tossing out good food.
If you decide to make this dish, please let me know how it turns out for you in comments below. If you have your own twist on Orange Chicken I’d love to hear that too.
For more affordable recipes, check out our Recipes page in the ADVENTURE section in our top toolbar.
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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Why couldn’t I fall in love with a smart gay man like you? Besides the sexual thing, I actually love the creative aspect of cooking and making my friends and boys friends beg to be invited for more! But it would be so nice to have a man to cook for me once in a while! But that’s what happens when I tolerate no BS and have a bad boy picker! An oxymoron to be sure!
Bad boys are overrated. I was with two of them over the years.
Glad I ended up with a nice guy instead. He drives me CRAZY sometimes because he is allergic to listening and needs a lot of attention, but I love him and he has a good heart. Sometimes he even does the dishes without being asked and will even take out the garbage all on his own if he notices it needs to go out.
So I am very lucky with Justin.
I have a good guy – never was attracted to bad boys, thank heaven. You and Justin are so sweet, it warms my heart. One thing that has come out of all the craziness of the last few years is discovering wonderful people like you. God bless you both.
Ann, I know what you mean. Been through two couldn’t boil water – and one who just wouldn’t even if he could. The first one gave me a mixer for our first anniversary. I love to cook and love to cook for people, but… The three years ago, I reconnected with the one who got away, the love of my life from college who had also been through two marriages. I love, love, love to cook for him (and send him home about 45 miles away with plenty of food for him and his dad, who he takes care of) but he also loves to cook for me and take care of me – runs me a bath when I am tired, has painted my house and is driving his new pickup in the Christmas parade so my business, Tis The Season, can be the one to bring in Santa! I waited all my life for him, without even knowing it exactly. God is good and the real thing can happen! All my guys were bad boys – until I got my good man!!!!!!!
Thanks for the recipe! Re: Chinese food being cut into small pieces, I had always heard that it was so that the food could be cooked quickly in a wok, to conserve cooking fuel, which was precious.
Will try this recipe…sounds good
Do you ever shop at ALDI? That’s one way I keep grocery costs down.
I’ve never been to ALDI. There isn’t one that’s walking distance for me.
Closest ALDI to Boystown is 4500 N. Broadway. Great prices, especially on dairy items (at least here in MN)
Hey thanks for the great orange chicken recipe. I have been looking for a good one- can’t wait to try this. Just wanted to also give you a suggestion of a great cookbook that you may be interested in checking out, “Holly Clegg’s trim&TERRIFIC KITCHEN 101: Secrets to Cooking Confidence,” by Holly Clegg. This book is for anyone, during any stage in life- when you want to start cooking, to the busy person who doesn’t have time to cook yet wants to prepare a healthier meal. Enjoy!
http://www.hollyclegg.com
Kevin, you need to invest in a rice cooker. You just put in equal amounts or rice and water and turn it on. That’s it. Rice comes out perfectly EVERY time. Brown, yellow, white, jasmine, basmati, doesn’t matter what kind. You can score a small one for less than $20 and Christmas IS coming….geez, I sound like a sales girl!
The recipe is wonderful. I also make orange chicken and what I do after seasoning the chicken is get a can of concentrated orange juice and without diluting it, add it to the chicken and then bake it. It is actually quite good and gives it a nice orange flavor. What can I say, I hate to cook so anything that makes it easier for me is great. I haven’t made it in years so maybe next time I go to the grocery store I will check the frozen juice section, if there is still one.
Unions =VAT tax
In private sector unions are a tax at every level from raw materials, to manufacture through sales
However, unlike a Euro style VAT ours also applies to public sector- Unions are a tax on taxpayers at every level of every function of government and production of gov’t services.
Is there anyone who can calculate the total cost of this VAT style tax on the public. That would go a long way in the PR war against unions, especially in Illinois
I definitely will try this recipe when the Thanksgiving turkey runs out. One question though: have you ever tried microwaving peppers? Cut up in small pieces, they cook in about 2.5 minutes and have a sweet taste that gets lost when they are sauteed. I started doing this because of an experiment due to getting too many pizzas with the vegetables still raw. Bleh! Now I do it all the time because we like the taste so much better.
The size pieces you use would probably take 3 minutes or so,
I never use the microwave. Justin has that to reheat coffee, but I never touch the thing. I like heating things up in the oven or in a pan on the stove.
Kevin thanks for this amazing recipe. In the 1970′s I used to collect old “women’s” magazines from the 1920′s thru the 1940′s and loved the recipes which always used fresh home cooked ingredients with an eye on being economical as well as what was in a weekly ration book during the war. I was young and newly married and loved the challenge of budgeting and making different food for my dear husband who is now long gone…maybe even dead. Your spirit and amazingly positive attitude will carry all us Hillbuzz devotees through these hard times. I might just go up in the attic and post a recipe from the difficult depression and war years when people came together survived and prospered once again! With your inspiration we can survive the next 4 years
If you are frying them its quite spimle. There should be enough oil in the pan about 1/3 to almost 1/2 way full so it doesn’t go everywhere (use a splatter guard if you have one too). The oil is ready when you put a wooden spoon in it (handle side down) and bubbles form around the edge. Once the chicken is breaded, simply toss it in. As long as your nuggets aren’t ginormous they should really only take about 3 minutes per side. Or if your pan is huge, they will float to the top of the oil when ready. Have a meat thermometer? 165 -170 for poultry. Enjoy. Was this answer helpful?
Hey Kevin, how are you coming along with coupon-ing? I don’t know if there’s a super-Target near you but I hear that they sometimes have good deals AND store coupons on fresh meats. The Target website lists all their current printable coupons, as well as the fresh food sales.
The good thing with Target is being able to use the Target coupons combined with a manufacturer coupon (on both consumables and non).
You might like this quick, tasty, one meat with two veg one pot supper- an Italian stir fry.
2 TBS EVOO
2 links Italian sausage sliced into chunks
2 cloves garlic- peeled and crushed
8 oz. fresh mushrooms- sliced
1 9 oz bag spinach
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Heat wok or large heavy pan over high heat. Add EVOO and swirl. Add garlic, sausage and mushrooms. Cook and stir until everything is covered in oil. Reduce heat to medium and stir occasionally until sausage is cooked through. Season with salt and pepper. Turn off heat, Add spinach and stir until spinach is wilting. Remove from heat and serve with garlic bread and a glass of white wine.
Kevin, this is cooking with PASSION. I enjoyed reading this so much. And when you said to “plop” 4 T of marmalade in the pan, I got tickled and had a much needed laugh (since Nov. 6). Thanks for the recipe and for sharing your life with us.
We had this for dinner tonight — yum!!
I have a good steak sandwich dinner. It’s not “cheap” but it’s not expensive either.
1 Tri-tip roast about a pound or so.
1 or 2 red, yellow, orange or green bell pepper, depending on size. I use the non green ones because I like the colors.
1 sweet onion.
8 oz pack sliced mushrooms, already sliced are cleaner and ready to cook.
Fresh garlic clove.
Baguette bread.
Cut little slots into/along the grain of the roast and push pieces of the garlic into it. Try to get it into the center of the meat. Grill, or brown and roast to your preferred doneness. It’s hard to screw up a tri-tip. Make sure you let it rest at least 5 minutes after you stop cooking it. This will help keep the juices from pouring put of it when you cut it.
Cook the veggies separately using the same pan and then combine them last. Use what ever you want to cook them in. I use butter.
Make sandwich rolls out of the bread. With a Baguette you can make any size sandwich you want and it’s nice and crusty.
The trick is to slice the meat real thin and at a 30 degree angle, across the grain.
Kevin, this dish sounds delightful.
I am stealing your remark “if food is a Superhero, sauce is the cape.” Love that!
The day after Thanksgiving, I was trying to make do with all of the leftovers from cooking the feast, so I made my annual turkey and andouille gumbo for out-of-town guests. I had some walnuts and Louisiana (thin-skinned, tart) oranges left, so I did a google search for a salad recipe. The dressing recipe called for orange marmalade, so I found an Alton Brown recipe at foodnetwork.com for making homemade orange marmalade, which I halved. I was able to use the remainder of a box of raw sugar, the lemon left over from the beverage tray, and the digital thermometer still out from smoking the turkey.
This marmalade is so good, I’ve been sneaking bits of the orange rind for a treat and putting the marmalade on toast for breakfast. I didn’t go through sterilizing the jars, etc. because it was a small portion, but I’ll be making more next time. This would be a great addition to your pantry for making orange chicken!
OMGosh Kevin!!
I made your orange chicken and only added cashews…WOOHOO!! this is fabulous!! My husband hates anything chicken…and he LOVES this too!!! Might have added $2.00 to the total–but gotta say–worth it!! God Bless and Merry Christmas!!
On the fourth day I made orange chicken tacos.
On the fifth day I made orange chicken omelets.
On the sixth day I made orange chicken in these darling little puff pastry cups.
On the seventh day I rested. Duh.
On the eight day I had orange chicken on toast points.
On the ninth day I made risotto with orange chicken in it, but I felt unwell and didn’t eat any
On the tenth day I made orange chicken fertilizer for the tomato garden.