If you love Chinese takeout, but don’t love not knowing what goes into your food, you are in luck! This take-out fake out has all of the flavor, and you know exactly what goes into it!
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And now onto the food…
I have come a long way in the kitchen since I first started cooking. Even since I first started blogging. Just a few short years ago, I was a total follow-the-recipe-to-a-t kind of cook. And believe me – there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Cooking can still totally be enjoyable when you are just following a recipe! But I am definitely a lot more comfortable. More confident.
Take this chicken, for example. I had seen a recipe in a church cookbook that looked promising. I wrote down the basic ingredients, but then when I went to get started with dinner, I felt like changing it up a little bit. What I ended up with was a far cry from that original recipe. But do you know what? This totally worked. I’ll admit – I was a little bit worried at times, telling my husband that I didn’t know if dinner was even going to be any good. But it ended up better than good! My husband went back for seconds and begged for the leftovers the next day. I’m pretty sure this one will become a regular in our house.
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Chicken Oriental
Ingredients
Sauce
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1/4 cup chicken broth
- 4 tablespoons pineapple-orange juice
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon grated onion
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon ginger
- dash of cardamom
- salt and pepper
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon water
Chicken
- 1 1/4 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs, cubed
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 egg
- vegetable oil
- Rice for serving
- sliced green onions for topping
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Stir in the chicken broth, juice, soy sauce, onion, brown sugar, ginger and cardamom. Season with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat until it comes to a gentle boil. Let it cook for about 5 minutes.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and the water. Add the cornstarch mixture to the sauce and cook just until the sauce starts to thicken up. (This will probably happen very quickly.) Remove the sauce from the heat.
- Meanwhile, pour a layer of vegetable oil into a large saute pan and warm over medium heat. Add the flour to a shallow dish and season with salt and pepper. Add the egg to another shallow pan and add about a teaspoon of water. Lightly whisk.
- Working in 3-4 batches, take some of the chicken and dip it in the egg mixture. Allow some of the egg to drip off, and put the chicken in the flour mixture to coat. Use tongs to transfer the chicken to the hot oil and pan fry, turning as necessary, until the chicken is golden brown and cooked through. Remove to a paper towel lined plate. Repeat with the remaining chicken, adding more oil as necessary.
- Put all of the cooked chicken into a large bowl. Pour the sauce over the top and stir to coat the chicken. Serve over rice and top with sliced green onions.
Recipe Notes:
*I love chicken thighs (I think they have more flavor) but boneless, skinless chicken breasts will work here, too.
More Chinese Food Take-Out Fake-Outs:
Around the Web:
Asian Chicken Kebabs from My Baking Addiction
Dragon Roll from Just One Cookbook
Sausage Egg Rolls with Homemade Sweet and Sour Sauce from Favorite Family Recipes
Colleen Williams says
Great recipe! All six of us loved it! I used 1/2 of the brown sugar, because we prefer things less sweet. Other than that, I followed the recipe