How to Make Orange Chicken

Hi I’m chef Jason Hill here in Chinatown Los Angeles, home to some of the most authentic Chinese food in California. Did you know the fortune cookie was invented right here in 1916? During Chinese New Year I explored the streets of Chinatown enjoying the people, the shows and eating my way through some of LA’s best Chinese restaurants. I left satisfied and inspired to make a great Chinese recipe at home. Alright, let’s make a great Chinese chicken recipe. Orange chicken recipes are famous here in California where you’ll find them on practically every Chinese menu. But why settle for Chinese delivery when you can make it easily at home and all those popular recipes for orange chicken are deep fried but I think it’s just as tasty and healthier as a sauté. Let’s learn how to make orange chicken. First, we’re going to make the orange chicken sauce. For this easy sauce preparation, we’re starting with a half a cup of packed brown sugar and we’re going to whisk in a half a cup of white wine vinegar. And three tablespoons of soy sauce, you can use low sodium if you like and then next, you’re going to need the juice of one fresh orange. After you’ve whisked the sauce and the sugar’s dissolved then grab another orange. We’re going to take the zest off which we’re going to add to the sauté a little bit later. To zest fresh citrus fruits I recommend a little handheld zester or you can use a grater but be careful when you’re zesting, you only want the zest, you don’t want to go too deep and get that white rind in there because that’s bitter. Now let’s quickly go over the ingredients we’re going to need to sauté the chicken. We’re going to need about a tablespoon of sesame oil, about a tablespoon of sake which is rice wine, a cup of diced green onion, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper or you can use red pepper flakes. Teaspoon each of minced garlic and minced fresh gingerroot. You need a little bit of a cornstarch slurry and three cups of boneless skinless diced chicken breasts which I diced last. For the slurry, you just need one tablespoon of cornstarch and one tablespoon of water and mix up. To get to the fresh gingerroot, we need to remove the skin, took off one little piece give me a flat work surface and we’re just going to kind of square it up removing the skin as we do this and then we’re just giong to grate it in the cheese grater. I have my wok preheated on high. We’re going to pour in about a tablespoon of the sesame oil and we’re going to add our garlic and ginger and stir for about 30 seconds and then we’re going to have the chicken. Let’s get our chicken in there. After stir frying for about 3 to 5 minutes, let’s go ahead and put our onion in followed by the pepper. We’re going to stir that around and let it cook for another minute or so. Now we’re going to hit it with about a tablespoon of sake and stir that around, we’re going to add our sauce. Let’s pour our sauce mix. We’re going to bring this to a boil and then we’re going to add our slurry and it’s going to thicken it up. It’s coming to a boil. Check this out, pour a steady stream of the slurry in there, stirring all the time and we’re going to see it start to thicken. After I added the cornstarch, I let it cook for about another minute and you can see it’s thickened up. Now it’s time to stir in our orange zest and this will be ready to eat. Let’s plate up. I like to serve this over a bit of brown steamed rice and we’ll put a little orange peel in there for garnish followed by some green onion. There you go. Sautéed orange chicken. I hope you enjoy this healthier version of the orange chicken. My two daughters have already given a thumbs up and I have to agree. Thanks for watching.