orange chicken

Its been a long time since we tried a new Kai recipe. For the last few months we've been happily eating one of the following meals weekly: beef with broccoli, beef with snow peas, fried spring rolls or moo goo gai pan. We've learned that well marbled chuck roast is our favorite cut of beef for stir fry and Nuoc Tuong Chay soy sauce is better than LaChoy. We have mastered those 4 Kai recipes, so it was time to try something new. This weekend we made Orange chicken http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gufY6DhylpY

The ingredients are:

sauce
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp rice cooking wine
1-2 tsp corn starch

3/4 lb chicken
2 eggs beaten
rice flour
orange peel sliced
ginger root sliced

We used fresh squeezed orange juice since we needed the peel anyway. Remember to slice off all the bitter white flesh under the peel before you slice it thinly. The chicken meat was from the thigh and the chicken stock was our usual pinch of chicken bouillon cube mixed with hot water.

First we prepared all of the sauce ingredients:


and then the rest of the ingredients:


Ian started dipping the chicken... egg, then flour, then egg, then flour


That was taking too long so another hand jumped in and suddenly the process got alot messier


In the meantime, the vegetable oil was ready for chicken pieces


The chicken was fried in 2 batches


and it only took about 5 minutes for the chicken to cook


Oil in the wok was heated and the ginger and orange peel was added


The sauce ingredients came next


When the orange sauce started to bubble, the chicken was added


Looking and smelling so yummy


Orange chicken served with jasmine rice. This meal served 3 people so we're going to have a lunch snack tomorrow from the leftovers.


The orange chicken was eaten while watching Dexter, and Ian gives it a thumbs up



We were very happy with how the dish turned out. First, the coating on the chicken had no strange aftertaste or weird texture as we have experienced before when trying to batter and fry foods. The chicken was extremely tender and juicy too. The orange sauce had a great flavor, although our American palates would have liked it slightly sweeter so next time we will add more sugar. Everything else was perfect, so this recipe was awarded 8.75 out of 10 rice flour bags. We will certainly make it again.