Healthy Orange Chicken (Easy Stir-Fry Recipe) - Kirbie's Cravings (2024)

FAQs

What are the seven common ingredients in a stir fry? ›

The main ingredients to a stir-fry are: Proteins – chicken, beef, pork, seafood, tofu, tempeh, seitan. Aromatics – garlic, green onions, shallots, ginger.

Velvet chicken is a Chinese cooking technique where boneless, skinless chicken pieces are coated in a mixture of baking soda, cornstarch, wine, and seasoning, then briefly cooked resulting in tender, velvety chicken that easily absorbs sauces. In some methods, egg white is also included.

The chicken itself is also different, as orange chicken is made with dark meat chicken ( chicken thighs) and sweet and sour chicken is made with chicken breasts and fried in a batter that yields a puffy and airy crust.

The best orange side dishes are white rice, chicken salad, chicken noodles, potato salad, french fries, instant pot hot and sour soup, and instant pot macaroni salad. If you're looking for a healthy side dish, you'll enjoy the green salad, instant pot zucchini alfredo and stir-fried veggies.

According to Food & Wine, ketchup is the ultimate way to take the flavor of homemade stir fry up a level, thanks to its sweet and sour flavor profile. It just might be the easiest cooking hack to elevate your home cooking to that of your favorite take-out.

Water Velveting

It will lower the fat content of your meal, so it's a healthier way to cook. It's also a technique used in some Cantonese cooking, so water velveting is the way to go if you're going for that light feel.

Aromatic ingredients like garlic, ginger, green onions, chilies and spices. These ingredients are typically added to the oil first to infuse it with flavor. You won't need much; a few teaspoons to a tablespoon of total aromatic ingredients per person adds a serious amount of flavor.

How to make the orange chicken sauce. The orange sauce is made from a mixture of the orange juice and zest, sugar, soy sauce, garlic, ginger and rice vinegar. This is bubbled up in the wok until slightly thickened. The chicken is then added back in, and tossed in the sauce until fully coated.

In Chinese, this dish is known as "陳皮雞", literally "dried citrus peel chicken", referring to dried orange or tangerine peel. However, the taste and recipes of this dish differ due to cultural and geographical factors.

What is orange chicken from a Chinese restaurant? ›

What Is Orange Chicken? Orange chicken is one of many iterations of Chinese takeout dishes that involve fried chicken pieces tossed with sauce. In this case, the sauce is a mix of soy sauce, water, and orange juice, plus some cornstarch thickener to make the sauce just thick enough to coat the chicken.

Customize your orange chicken stir fry

We love switching up the veggies according to what's seasonal! Here are more ways to make it your own: Swap your veggies. I also love this recipe with broccoli and asparagus, but mushrooms, snow peas, and even brussels sprouts would be great.

The best side dishes to serve with orange chicken are jasmine rice, fried wonton, chow mein, broccoli with garlic sauce, zucchini noodles, Chinese egg noodles, bok choy, hot and sour soup, spaghetti squash, vegetable medley, cucumber salad, fried rice, french fries, boneless pork ribs, cauliflower rice, garden salad, ...

Huet demi-sec, or sparkling rose. If there isn't too much sweetness in the sauce, an orange wine could be a fantastic match.

Good vegetables for stir-frying include bell peppers, zucchini, carrots, broccoli, yellow or white onions, green onions, pea pods, cabbage, spinach, asparagus, mushrooms, and leafy Asian greens in the “choy” family, such as bok choy and yu choy. In a hurry? You can use a 16-ounce bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables.

Stir-fry onions first, then add hard vegetables such as carrot and broccoli. Quick-cooking vegetables, such as snow peas, leafy greens and bean sprouts, should be added towards the end of cooking. If using vegies that have a combination of both textures, such as gai laan, add the stems first and the leaves later.

Aromatics in first- onion, leeks, garlic, ginger, chilli. Firm vegetables in second – like carrot, capsicum/bell peppers, stems of Asian Greens (Buk Choy in this recipe), zucchini / courgettes, eggplant, asparagus, canned baby corn, green beans, okra. Quicker cooking vegetables added next- snow peas, kale, cabbage.