How to Make Low Cal Spicy Orange Chicken

Hi this is chef John from foodwishes.com and today, we’re doing a spicy orange chicken. Watch out Panda Express, we’re coming for you, that’s not true. Our version is much much lower fat which means of course, it’s not as good because they take those thicken thigh pieces and they deep fry them in that batter and then after they’re crispy and crunchy and deep fried, they put them in the wok and they toss it with the sauce and it is delicious I like it but this is they’re using the same kind of flavors and we’re going to have a spicy orange chicken, it’s just not going to be high in calories. It’s going to be much healthier and you’ll see, it’s actually quite nice. So we’re going to make a little marinade here that’s 10 chicken thighs that I cut up in like two inch pieces. I’ve got some brown sugar, I’ve got some orange juice of course. It wouldn’t be orange chicken without orange. I’ve got some rice vinegar and if you’re wondering about these amounts, guess where you find them, that’s right on the site so go check it out. I’ve got some hot red pepper flakes and I just used the basic red pepper flakes. If you have the Asian chilies, fine. I’ve got some soy sauce, about a tablespoon. That’s my main salt component but also to add a little bit of saltiness and exotic flavor, I’m going to put in some fish sauce and if you don’t know about that or you haven’t seen me explain that in demos before, read the blog. It’s a really important ingredient. And you can find it in the supermarket. Another thing you may find is this ginger paste. I’m going to put in about a tablespoon of that and every store has fresh ginger so if you can't find that, just go ahead and grate a couple of tablespoons of fresh ginger. Give that a mix, put that in the fridge and you should marinate that for about half hour, 45 minutes, you can even go an hour and that’s a great perfect time frame to get the rest of your ingredients ready. So I’m going to use my zester, it’s a specific knife right there, see that, we’ve talked about that before too to just take the zest off, just the orange part. I’m going to give it a rough chop. Let me give you a close up, you see there’s no white, there’s no bitterness, pure orange flavor. You’ve got some garlic. I’ve got some pepper, I’m going to put the jalapeno for some heat. Here’s where I screwed up. I went with the orange bell pepper, I should have bought a red one. You see I was out thinking, I thought I was too smart. I thought orange bell pepper for orange chicken will make sense. The color I didn’t like at the end. I wish I had red but you know what, it’s too late so I’m going to take a bunch of green onions, we’re going to use these in two different ways. We’re going to take the bottoms, the white part and we’re going to slice those thin and we’re going to actually put those in the pan before the tops, the green parts so keep those separate so I cut the bottoms and I’m going to do the tops-I’m not going to use the whole bunch of top, the green part. I’m going to do maybe I don’t know a third of a cup. You see I don’t want too much, I don’t want it to be green onion chicken. There’s our peas, sugar snap peas, you’ll find those, they’re’ right next to the snow peas. Delicious, sweet, crunchy, you can eat them raw. The snow pea, you know snow pea, they’re flat and they’re boring to me. There’s a little bit of fresh cilantro I put out at the end and let’s get our chicken prepped. It’s been marinating for an hour, I’m going to put it in a colander and I’m going to drain it very well. Now don’t throw away the marinade, you’re going to add a little bit of that later, but I’m going to take that drained chicken thigh chunks. It has that beautiful orange flavor now. It’s been imparted during the marinating. I’m going to put it in my hot nonstick pan and even though I drained it look at all that liquid. You see when you first put it in after a couple of minutes, all the rest of that liquid is going to kind of seep out. I did it from the center, you can tilt the pan and take a spoon and get it out but I want you to remove as much of that juice after two minutes as you can and a little bit is going to still be in there, still seep out, that’s okay, because our pan’s on high and if you give it 5 or 6 minutes, you see how it kind of pushed it away from the center. If you give it 5 or 6 minutes, all that marinade will kind of start to reduce down to a syrup and then will start to turn golden brown and that’s what we want. So if we watched our caramel chicken video, very similar technique. So once all that juice starts to caramelize, you just tosh your chicken in it and this took about 6 or 7 minutes until my chunks of chicken were kind of nicely glazed with that mixture, the marinade. And again, Panda, they’re going to deep fry the chicken with the coating and then toss it with the sticky sauce. It is very delicious like I said but this is just a different way to do it. So we’re going to get the same flavors. We’re just not going to use any real oil here, any deep frying. So this is much much healthier for you. Here we go, we’re going to add our onions, our garlic and our orange zest and we’re just going to sauté that for maybe two or three minutes just to get the raw flavor kind of take the edge off and after two minutes if sautéing those aromatics, I’m going to add about half of the reserved marinade. I’m going to tell you right now, you’re not going to see any cornstarch coming out here. I know some people, they like to do the cornstarch at the end with the water to make it thick, I’m going to reduce that for about 5 minutes until just that marinade is slightly thickened naturally. You’re going to obviously taste for salt later so that’s why I didn’t put a bunch of salt or soy in. I only put a little splash there at the beginning. So once that sauce reduces down and thickens up just a little bit, go ahead and dump your vegetables in and those are only going to take 3 or 4 minutes to warm through. You see the sugar snap peas, you can eat those raw, they’re just tender and sweet so once those are warmed through and the peppers just aren’t super crunchy, I mean you want a little bite to them, you’re done. And agian, if you want to make the slurry they call it, the little teaspoon of cornstarch and water and stir it in there at the end and make it all sticky and gooey, go ahead. But as I said, I’m not going to. I’m going to just use natural reduction to get it to thicken up a little bit. And the last thing there, I’m going to add my green onion tops which only take a minute to warm through so basically, you can turn the heat off and you’re ready to serve and then I was mad, you see those orange peppers, orange chicken, orange pepper, I outsmarted myself. I should’ve used red, it would have been better looking. Anyway, I can't be too upset because I have a delicious healthy plate of food to eat and you know the drill. Go to the site, read the story and you’ll even find out why I didn’t use a wok so anyway, I hope you give this a try and as always, enjoy.