Quarantine Cooking: Orange Chicken

First off, I'd like to apologize. It's been quite a while since I've written here. With the closure of many dine-in experiences, I haven't been motivated to write about food lately. Like many during this quarantine, I involuntarily found myself with more free time on my hands. I'm ashamed to say that I spent most of that time moping and playing hours of Animal Crossing, but in recent weeks I pushed myself to learn some new skills. One of those skills is cooking from scratch, which I had previously been so bad at (as described in my "I can't cook" series). However, with all the practice I've been getting during this quarantine, I'm finally starting to improve. So during this quarantine, I will share my adjusted recipes as well as some notes about my experience cooking these delicious meals.

For starters, I tried to follow Modern Honey's recipe for Chinese Orange Chicken (https://www.modernhoney.com/chinese-orange-chicken/). However, I was missing a lot of these ingredients: ginger, garlic powder/ garlic, green onions, FLOUR.

I replaced many of the garnishes with salt, black pepper, and extra red pepper flakes (which I had saved from the many pizza deliveries I ordered). I also didn't have regular vinegar. Instead, I had distilled white vinegar, which I typically used for cleaning my faucets. This seemed to work fine.

Finally, I didn't know what to do about the flour since that's what gives the orange chicken its crunch. So I replaced the 1/3 cup of flour with another 1/3 cup of cornstarch. I also made sure each piece was thoroughly covered with as much eggwash as possible. The egg and cornstarch mixture was decent for a chicken coating. It definitely was not as crunchy as your average fast-food orange chicken but close enough.

Below are my adjusted ingredients and method to Modern Honey's recipe.

Prep Time: 10 min

Cooking Time: 12 min

Total Time: 22 min

Ingredients

For the chicken:

-Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (I used 7 of Kirkland Signature's Chicken Tenderloins)

-3 Eggs

-2/3 cup Cornstarch

-Virgin Olive Oil

For the sauce:

-1 cup of freshly squeezed Orange Juice

-1/2 cup of Brown Sugar

-2 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar

-2 tablespoons of Soy Sauce

-1 tablespoon Cornstarch

-Red Pepper Flakes to taste

-Salt to taste

-Ground Black Pepper to taste

1. Cut your boneless chicken into smaller pieces. If your chicken is frozen (like mine was) let it thaw for an hour before cutting.

2. Whisk your 3 eggs in a bowl to form an eggwash. Prepare your cornstarch in a separate bowl.

3. Coat each piece of chicken in eggwash. Then coat each piece with cornstarch.

4. Heat your olive oil in a medium saucepan on medium heat.

5. Cook the coated chicken in the pan for about 5 minutes or until cooked.

6. When done, set your chicken aside.

7. In a medium saucepan, mix your orange juice, vinegar, brown sugar, soy sauce, orange zest, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Heat for about 2 minutes.

8. In a separate bowl, mix your cornstarch with a tablespoon of water until it forms a paste.

9. Put the cornstarch paste into the saucepan with the other ingredients. Mix for about 5 minutes until sauce thickens. When done, remove from heat.

10. Toss the chicken into the sauce and mix thoroughly.