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The Panda Express Chinese take-out classic, made in your own kitchen. This delicious and Easy Orange Chicken recipe is our family’s favorite homemade Chinese take out recipe. It’s made with crispy homemade boneless chicken bites that are covered with an authentic homemade orange chicken sauce you will love! This dish comes together in just 30 minutes!
If you enjoy the Chinese Orange Chicken from places like Panda Express or P.F. Chang’s, then you will not only love this recipe but prefer it. It has the same authentic flavor of the classic takeout orange chicken but costs less. It’s definitely a win-win in our home.
If you love making Asian inspired recipes, check out some of my other takeout recipes you can make at home. My favorites are Easy Beef Lo Mein Noodles, Healthy Orange Chicken, Teriyaki Salmon Stir Fry and General Tso’s Chicken.
Why you’ll love this Panda Express Copycat recipe
- Made with delicious Homemade Orange sauce. This sweet and savory sauce is made at home with fresh orange juice and ingredients you actually know.
- An easy stir fry. Easy to prep and made mostly with kitchen staple ingredients, this easy Orange Chicken goes from pantry to table in 30 mins.
- Better than takeout. You will not miss takeout with this richly flavored orange chicken on the menu. Half the price and none of the guilt with extra added ingredients!
How to make Orange Chicken Sauce
This is the most important part of the whole dish. Getting the right orange chicken sauce flavor completes this dish!
Orange Sauce Ingredients
Here is what orange chicken sauce is made of:
- Orange juice: I like using fresh squeezed orange juice for this recipe but you are welcome to use store bought squeezed orange juice.
- Soy Sauce: Grab the low-sodium. Can replace with amino liquids.
- Vinegar: You can use rice vinegar or regular white vinegar.
- Spices: Black pepper, fresh ground preferably.
- Thickening Agent: Corn Starch is used to thicken the sauce.
- Sweetener: Brown sugar is added to sweeten up the sauce but you can use honey if you like.
- Herbs: Fresh garlic and grated ginger. Adding those 2 ingredient as fresh, makes a whole difference.
- Spicy: If you would like to make the recipe spicy, you can always add cayenne pepper or chili flakes to the sauce. (optional)
- Oil: Vegetable or can use sesame oil. I am not a huge fan of sesame oil’s taste so I opt out and use vegetable oil. You can also use tasteless coconut oil.
Cooking the simple orange sauce
- To prepare the orange chicken sauce, bring all the sauce ingredient together in bowl or cup and whisk to well.
- Heat up a skillet or frying pan and simmer the sauce on medium-low heat until it thickens up.
How to make Easy Orange Chicken Recipe
- To prepare the chicken, cut the boneless chicken thighs or tenders into small pieces, about 1/2 inch long. You do not want the pieces to be too big
- Toss the chicken pieces in a bowl and coat with the flour, corn starch, black pepper, onion powder, salt and ginger powder. I also add a little bit of paprika to make the color of the chicken come out a little more orange after frying.
- In a deep fraying pan, fry the pieces of chicken leaving some space between them to avoid over crowding. They will only need to be fried for about 2-3 minutes at the most until golden brown, because the pieces are small. Over cooking the chicken makes them chewy so be careful there. I
- Note: If you cut the chicken pieces bigger than 1/2 inch cubes, add more cooking time. I do not recommend using bigger pieces. They are supposed to be bite sizes.
- Once the chicken is done cooking, drain well using a spider strainer spoon and transfer over to the cooked sauce. Toss well with the sauce and allow the chicken and the sauce to cook together for another 1-2 minutes.
- Serve this simple Orange Chicken Recipe with some homemade Lo Mein Noodles or over white rice. Garnish with sesame seeds and chopped green onions to add color (optional).
Recipe notes and tips
- Use a large non-stick pan/skillet or wok.
- Opt. out for skinless boneless chicken tenderloins if you don’t like thighs.
- Cut your chicken into even, bite sized, pieces. This way they’ll cook evenly.
- If you prefer a milder sauce flavor, you can easily adjust the amount of orange zest in the recipe.
- You can reserve some of the sauce to place on rice or double up on the sauce ingredients to make it extra saucy.
- Make sure your skillet is nice and hot.
- You can use store bought orange juice is you have to but don’t skip the orange zest.
FAQs
I personally think that orange chicken is best served over rice or with Lo Mein noodles. For the rice options, you can use regular white rice or fried rice. Other similar noodles to Lo Mein or similar noodles are also great choices.
You can make a few swaps to this recipes to make it a bit healthier. For the chicken, you can air fry them instead of deep frying them. You can also swap brown sugar for honey. Or try making my Healthy Orange Chicken recipe.
Most Orange Chicken Sauces are made with orange juice, rice vinegar, fresh garlic, brown sugar, soy sauce, fresh ginger, red chili flakes (optional), and orange zest.
Everything made at home is always cleaner than take out. So the answer for me would be yes. Anything you make at home is always made with the best quality of ingredients and is not stuffed with additives and preservatives. This orange chicken recipe is made with simple ingredients and made in just 30 minutes so you wont have any problems.
Both are made with coated, crispy chicken with sweeter sauce, but general Tso’s chicken is more of a chili based sauce and it is a bit darker in color. Orange chicken usually has a lighter-colored sweet, sour, savory glaze. It’s not as spicy because dried red chilies aren’t use in this dish.
Any leftover orange chicken can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3- 4 days. Since the sauce is on the chicken, overtime, the chicken will not be as crisp as it was when served immediately. You can also freeze orange chicken in an air tight container for up to 1 month.
To reheat, you can make a new batch of orange sauce and warm the chicken in a skillet with the sauce or simply heat the leftovers in a microwave.
Similar Takeout recipes
I hope you enjoy all the recipes I share with you, including this delicious Easy Orange Chicken recipe. I hope you try it, enjoy it, rate it and share it with your friends and family!
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Easy Orange Chicken Recipe
Ingredients
- 6 whole boneless chicken thighs, or 2 lbs. of chicken tenderloins
- ¼ cup all purpose flour
- 1 tbsp. corn starch
- 1 tsp. black pepper, or less to taste, fresh ground
- 1 tsp. onion powder
- 1/2 tsp. ginger powder
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. paprika, to add color to the chicken
- Vegetable oil for frying
Orange Chicken Sauce
- ¾ cup fresh orange juice
- 1½ tbsp. corn starch
- 2 tbsps. vegetable oil
- 3 tbsps. low sodium soy sauce
- 1½ tbsp. rice vinegar, or white vinegar
- 2 tbsps. brown sugar
- ½ tbsp. grated ginger
- 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
- ½ tsp. black pepper, fresh ground
- 1 tsp. orange zest
- Chili flakes, optional to add heat
Instructions
- Dice the chicken into ½ inch cube pieces and place in a bowl. Add in the flour, corn starch, salt, black pepper, onion powder, paprika, and ginger powder to coat the chicken.
- In a deep frying pan, bring the oil to medium-high heat. Fry the chicken until golden brown. Takes about 2-3 minutes. Do no over cook or else it will become chewy.
- Meanwhile, whisk all the sauce ingredients and a bowl. Transfer to a hot non stick skillet or frying pan and cook on low-heat, simmering until the sauce thickens up.
- Transfer the fried chicken to the sauce and mix to coat well. Let the sauce and chicken simmer together for 1-2 minutes and then remove from heat.
- Serve with homemade Lo Mein Noodles or white rice. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and chopped green onions. (optional)
Video
Notes
- Use a large non-stick pan/skillet or wok.
- Opt out for skinless boneless chicken tenderloins if you don’t like thighs.
- Cut your chicken into even, bite sized, pieces. This way they’ll cook evenly.
- If you prefer a milder sauce flavor, you can easily adjust the amount of orange zest in the recipe.
- You can reserve some of the sauce to place on rice or double up on the sauce ingredients to make it extra saucy.
- Make sure your skillet is nice and hot.
- You can use store bought orange juice is you have to but don’t skip the orange zest.
- If you really have to, to make this Easy Orange Chicken recipe even easier, you buy frozen popcorn chicken and cook them so you don’t have to go through the effort of cutting up the raw chicken.
My husband thought this was delicious! I followed it to the T but forgot the sesame seeds at the end! Next time! Thank for the wonderful recipe.
Yay! Glad y’all enjoyed it. Thanks so much for leaving a review.
The sauce was delicious and the chicken was so tender . I will wait for the final verdict with my grand boys who are picky eaters! But I think we have a winner!!! Thank you.
Hi Alice,
Thanks so much for the review. Glad you enjoyed the recipe.
Solid recipe! I didn’t have any oranges or orange juice on hand. Substituted pineapple juice. Outstanding. I also subbed in sesame chili oil for half of the oil.
I need to try that! Sounds amazing!
Awesome! My kids loved it and they are so picky when it comes to chicken. My middles child said it was better than the Chinese place we order from and told me I should go make this chicken for them! I didn’t have regular oranges so I used cuties mandarin oranges and zest. Thanks for the recipe.
So happy to hear that. Thanks for leaving a review.
This one is a hit, even with my picky teenager! I didn’t have quite enough orange juice, so I added some orange marmalade, and it was fantastic! Making tonight, for the second time!
Happy to hear everyone enjoyed it and adding the marmalade was a brilliant idea. Thanks for the review.
This is so good and much quicker and easier to make than other orange chicken recipes I’ve tried that call for coating each individual piece of chicken in flour, then egg, then flour again.
Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Thank you!
Glad to hear you enjoyed it. Thanks so much for the review.
I made double the sauce right away and once I had to double the flouring for the amount of chicken I had, I then tripled the amount of sauce. After the chicken was added, I noticed that the sauce was SUPER thick. Should there be a limitation on the amount you would double or triple of the corn starch? I thinned out with more orange juice but I don’t think it’s going to really save it.
Hi Cortney,
Not sure what happened. The sauce has 1.5 tbsp of corn starch. So that’s barely enough to thicken the sauce. The flour mixture is for coating the chicken pieces before frying.You don’t add the extra left over flour in the skillet. The chicken should be dry after frying and shouldn’t affect the thickness of the sauce. This recipe comes with a video if you want to see how it’s made. I am sorry I just don’t know what went wrong on your end. You can always loosen the sauce with some broth or water if it’s a bit thick. But if the flour was added somehow in there, not sure how to fix it.
Oh, no, the flour wasn’t added, only to coat the chicken to fry. I’m just wondering if having triple amount of sauce ingredients- 3x the amount of corn starch. I don’t cook with corn starch much! Thinking on it, perhaps my stove is hotter than it should be and maybe that helped it to thicken quickly and more than it should have? (My oven temp is 100° hotter than it is set to so I wouldn’t doubt the stovetop thermostat is hotter too!)
This meal is so easy and fast. I Have always made my own version of this version of orange chicken, however this recipe is always so delicious. I also add in a drained cup of pineapple chunks for that added yummy goodness.
Hi Marty,
Glad you enjoyed the recipe. Pineapple chunks are the perfect addition to this meal. Thanks for leaving a review.
My family loved this! I did make it spicy, husband said better than chinese restaurant.
Hi Lynee!
Glad y’all enjoyed it! Thanks for the review!
Great recipe, super easy and very tasty! Just saved the recipe so that I can make it again. Thank you.
Thanks so much for the review! Glad you enjoyed it!