Orange Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry

If your family is a fan of Chinese food, chances are you’ve ordered a dish called Orange Chicken. There are so many variations of this dish that most people’s culinary experience eating it really depends on each person’s palate. Sometimes the dish will have a strong soy sauce flavor to it. Other times Orange Chicken will be sweet and tangy, almost like a sweet and sour dish. However, this dish can be easily re-created in your home kitchen based on how you like it.

Using ginger, garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar, orange zest and juice, and oyster sauce as a base, you can adjust this sauce to your liking. Whenever I’m cooking stir-fry, I like to make the sauce first. Generally speaking, I always recommend to people when making a stir-fry sauce to taste as you go, tweaking it until you’re happy with it.

Ingredients:

Sauce:

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• 2 large cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• optional sweetener like sugar, honey, agave, etc.
• 1 teaspoon minced ginger

Stir-fry:

• salt and pepper
• 3 tablespoons corn starch
• 1 pound chicken tender cut into cubes
• olive oil
• 1/2 cup medium yellow onion, chopped
• 4 cups chopped vegetables such as broccoli, carrots, celery, mushroom, snap peas, etc.

Directions:

1. Blend all the ingredients for the sauce in a blender or food processor for 10 seconds.
2. Taste the sauce and add your choice of sweetener to your liking.
3. Blend again for a few more seconds.
4. Heat the sauce in a large skillet on medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Carefully transfer the sauce to a heat proof bowl.
5. Rinse the skillet clean.
6. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.
7. Add the corn starch and massage the chicken with your hands.
8. If using fresh broccoli or green beans, boil the broccoli for 3-5 minutes until soft enough to pierce with a fork yet firm.
9. Transfer the vegetables to a plate lined with a paper towel.
10. Wipe down the skillet until dry.
11. Heat approximately 1 tablespoon of oil in the skillet on medium-high heat.
12. Cook the onion and chicken until the chicken is cooked through, approximately 3-4 minutes.
13. Add the remaining vegetables and stir-fry them together for 2 minutes.
14. Slowly add a few tablespoons of sauce while stirring the vegetables and chicken.
15. Continue to add the sauce a few tablespoons at a time, allowing about 15 seconds between each addition to allow sauce to slightly cook down.
16. Spoon the stir-fry over a bowl of hot rice. Serve immediately.

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