Orange Chicken
Updated Feb. 6, 2024
- Total Time
- About 1 hour
- Prep Time
- 10 minutes
- Cook Time
- 55 minutes
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- 8cups vegetable oil, plus more as needed
- 1¼pound boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 2tablespoons soy sauce
- 1teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- ⅛teaspoon ground white pepper, optional
- 2large oranges
- ⅓cup lightly packed brown sugar
- 2tablespoons rice vinegar
- 2large eggs
- 1¼cups cornstarch
- 1teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)
- 4garlic cloves, minced
- 1(½-inch) piece ginger, peeled and grated
- ½ to 1teaspoon crushed red pepper, to taste
- 2scallions, thinly sliced
- 4cups steamed jasmine rice, for serving
Preparation
- Step 1
Add 2 inches of vegetable oil to a large, heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven. Heat to 375 degrees over medium-high.
- Step 2
Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, combine chicken, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, toasted sesame oil and white pepper. Mix until well combined and let marinate for 5 minutes. Grate oranges until you have 2 teaspoons of zest, then halve and squeeze oranges until you have 1 cup of juice. (Pulp in the juice is fine.) Add juice to a large bowl (save the zest for later) and whisk in the brown sugar, vinegar and remaining 1 tablespoon soy sauce; set aside.
- Step 3
Beat eggs in a pie dish or wide, shallow bowl. Add cornstarch to a second pie dish or bowl. Using your hands or tongs, transfer half of the marinated chicken to the egg mixture and toss until fully coated. Remove from the egg mixture, allowing excess to drip back into the dish, and transfer to the cornstarch. Toss until fully coated.
- Step 4
Using a slotted spoon, carefully transfer chicken into the hot oil, stir to separate the pieces and fry until golden brown and fully cooked, about 6 minutes. Transfer the chicken with the slotted spoon to a large paper towel-lined bowl. Sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt.
- Step 5
Repeat with the remaining chicken. Allow the oil to return to 375 degrees before each batch.
- Step 6
While the chicken cools slightly, in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, add 2 teaspoons oil, garlic, ginger and crushed red pepper, to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until garlic and ginger are just golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Pour in the reserved orange juice mixture. Increase heat to medium and cook, scraping the bottom of the pot to remove any browned bits, until the mixture is thickened to the consistency of maple syrup, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the reserved orange zest.
- Step 7
Discard the paper towels from the bowl of fried chicken, pour in the sauce and toss until each piece is well coated. Transfer the orange chicken to plates and top with sliced scallions. Serve alongside steamed rice.
Private Notes
Comments
Can this be made in an air-fryer?
Can I use less cooking oil? 8 cups seems a huge number of cups?? Otherwise, this looks delicious!
Very good flavor and surprisingly balanced. Cooked the chicken in an air fryer at 375 but otherwise followed the recipe closely. After reading comments I added a bit of hot honey to the sauce and reduced on higher heat. That seemed to do the trick.
One thing I’m really good at is reading “combine ONE tablespoon of soy sauce with a teaspoon of sesame oil and white pepper”. And immediately combining the ingredients while looking at the ingredients list which calls for TWO tablespoons of soy sauce. Does anyone have a system so they don’t make this mistake? I feel like this is something I do all the time when a recipe is written this way, when it calls for the total amount of the ingredient in the ingredients list, but then in cooking the recipe you are meant to split that ingredient up.
This was tasty but you can cook the chicken in less oil. Also, the sauce should be doubled, and there is nothing in it to thicken it in any way, even mildly, so it tended to sink to the bottom of the bowl instead of coating all the chicken. Tasty sauce, but it missed some chicken.
Very delicious, first off. Most of the other comments are correct—the estimated times in the recipe do not translate to real life practice. The sauce did reduce down to a syrup consistency but it was somewhere in the ball park of 15 to 20 minutes cooked on high. While labor-intensive, I do think the fresh orange flavor of this sauce makes it very much worth it on occasion over takeout or bottled. Will use less sugar going forward because the oranges are already doing some of that work. Assume lots of prep and cleanup.