Gluten Free Orange Chicken
Last week, a friend of mine asked for help in making homemade fried rice. I gladly supplied her with my recipe. I like it better than fried rice from any of the restaurants in my area. To be honest though, a friend of mine used to own an oriental restaurant here in town, and I learned a few tricks about Oriental cooking from her. Now, I wish that I learned even more.
The friend making fried rice last week also said she wanted to learn to make orange chicken. I searched around until I found an orange chicken recipe that looked like it was easy to make . I also wanted a recipe with somewhat normal ingredients. Surprisingly, I didn’t have to make any modifications to make it gluten-free. I did tweak some of the ingredients called for in the original recipe to make it work with the ingredients I had on hand, but that also made it more user friendly to me as well. I didn’t have ginger and skipped it. Since then I have added ground ginger to my huge collection of spices and herbs. I’ve made this a second time now and used the ground ginger in the second batch. It was good the first time, but it’s unbelievably awesome now!
Ground ginger is more concentrated than fresh ginger, so you won’t need as much. The original recipe called for 1/4 teaspoon of ginger. It didn’t specify fresh or ground, so it will be trial and error to taste. I used 1/4 teaspoon ground since that’s what I bought to keep on hand. From what I’ve read fresh ginger is very different from ground ginger, including the taste. I may buy some fresh to grate and freeze, as I’ve read about doing, if I don’t care for the way it flavors this marinade. I’ve only cooked with ginger one other time, so if you have some feedback for me, please let me know.
If you don’t care for much of a salty flavor, I recommend using less chicken bouillon until you find perfect balance for your taste buds. I found my orange sauce to be a little salter than I expected. I really like salty stuff, but it prevented the sweetness of the orange from coming through. Since my orange juice was already added to the marinade, I grabbed frozen orange juice and added a few teaspoons of the frozen concentrate to the cooking sauce. It was exactly what I needed to balance out the flavors.
Enjoy your homemade Orange Chicken. It is the most tender chicken chunks I’ve ever cooked.
Rating
- 2 tsp.garlic powder, minced
- 3 tsp. Powdered Chicken Boullion
- ¼ teaspoon white pepper
- 1 c. water
- ½ cup sugar
- ⅓ cup distilled white vinegar
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- 1 tsp (or more, to taste) Tabasco or similar sauce, red pepper flakes, or red pepper of choice
- ¼ teaspoon ginger
- Zest from Medium Orange
- Juice from zested Orange
- 1.5 - 2 lbs boneless, skinless, chicken breasts
- 1 - 2 c cornstarch
- 2 eggs, beaten
- Cooking Oil or Shortening
- Sesame Seeds
- Green Onions
- Cut chicken into bite size pieces.
- To zest the orange, only scrape the outer most layer of the orange rind. No zesting tool? Use the small side of a cheese grater. Zest directly into marinade post to capture all of the oils from the rind.
- Combine all ingredients for marinade in a medium sized saucepan and mix well.
- Pour enough (about ⅓ to ½) marinade into a bowl or storage bag to cover chicken. Set remaining marinade aside for later.
- Allow chicken to marinade for 30 minutes or more. Stir chicken occasionally while marinating.
- Drain and discard marinade from the chicken.
- Plan to garnish with toasted sesame seeds? Let them toast themselves while doing the rest of the work. Create a foil pouch, add the raw sesame seeds, seal it. Stick the pouch into your toaster oven. I put mine on the fifth burner, which is a "stay warm" burner. They're beautiful, golden, and nutty smelling when you're ready to garnish. Flip occasionally, if desired.
- Heat oil or shortening at medium temperature setting.
- Beat eggs and pour over the chicken. Coat all chicken with egg.
- Heat marinade in medium saucepan over low to medium heat. It will not thicken very much.
- Add chicken to the cornstarch and coat well. Shake to remove excess cornstarch.
- Drop cornstarch coated chicken into hot oil. Fry until golden brown. The cornstarch really made my oil bubble!
- Drain on paper towels to absorb excess oil.
- Taste your sauce. Too salty? Add a little frozen or fresh orange juice. No OJ? Add a little sugar. Too sweet? Add a little more chicken bouillon.
- Once all chicken has been fried, add it to the pot of sauce. Stir frequently to allow sauce to absorb into chicken.
- Serve orange chicken on top of a bed or white rice or fried rice.
- Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and thinly sliced green onions, if desired.
Yum! Thank you for linking up with us for #pinterestfoodie. Fresh ginger has a more bold almost spicy flavor. I love fresh ginger so much more than ground ginger as ground ginger leaves a funny taste on the back of your tongue that fresh ginger doesn’t. I also like to use crystallized ginger in baking.
Thanks for the ginger info. As you can tell, I’m not ginger educated. 😉 I am now, though.