CRISPY TAKEOUT ORANGE CHICKEN (No Wok Required)

Crispy takeout style orange chicken at home can be yours. No wok required! Use my code BRIANLAGERSTROM to get $5 off your Magic Spoon cereal by clicking this link: https://magicspoon.thld.co/brianlagerstrom_0223 and grab a box of Birthday Cake to try today!

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– RECIPE –
MARINADE
▪1lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, large diced
▪30g or 2Tbsp soy sauce
▪30g or 2Tbsp mirin
▪3g or 1tsp corn starch
▪4g or 1tsp baking soda

Cut chicken breasts into a large bite-sized dice.

In a bowl, whisk together soy, mirin, corn starch, and baking soda. Add chicken chunks and stir to coat. Marinate for 20 minutes.

BREADING AND FRYING
▪400g or 3 1/3c ap flour
▪15g or 2 1/4tsp salt
▪6g or 1 1/4tsp baking soda
▪400g or 3 1/4c corn starch
▪Water
▪Additional ap flour (about 3/350g cups)
▪Neutral oil. I’m using a bout 2qt. Oil should be around 2”/5cm deep

Into a 2nd bowl, whisk together 400g ap flour, salt, baking soda and corn starch. In a 3rd bowl, add about ¼ of the dry breading mixture. To that small portion of dry breader, whisk in water, a little at a time, until you’re left with a loose pancake batter texture.

Back in bowl 2 (with dry breading only), add about 1/4c of the wet breading slurry you just made. Mix and crumble the wet into the dry, creating a dry crumbly texture.

Grab a 4th bowl and fill it with about 3 cups of AP flour. Add marinated chicken pieces. Mix to coat well on all sides.

Shake off as much of the ap flour mixture from the chicken as possible, then add chicken into the wet batter in bowl 3. Toss to coat well.

Now move pieces of wet battered chicken into the craggy dry breader mix (bowl 2). Mix to coat well. Transfer chicken pieces to a tray.

Preheat large heavy bottomed pot over medium-high heat with about 2qt of neutral oil (or about 2-3”/5-8cm of oil, leaving plenty of room at the top of your pot so oil doesn’t boil over when you add chicken) for 10 min or until oil reaches a temp of 300F/150C. Gently lower breaded chicken into the oil (use a spider to avoid splashing oil). Fry 4-5 min at 300F/150C.

After 4-5 min or when nuggets are a light blonde golden color, remove from oil and transfer to a wire rack to drain.

Increase heat under oil pot to medium high to increase oil temp to 350F/175C. Carefully lower once-cooked nuggets back into the oil to cook for about another 90 seconds or until they’ve taken on a nice golden brown color. Transfer onto a wire rack and keep warm in a low oven while you make your orange chicken sauce.

ORANGE CHICKEN SAUCE
▪30g or 2Tbsp neutral, high smoke point oil
▪10g or 2 cloves garlic, grated
▪10g or about a 1.5” piece ginger, grated
▪20g or 4Tbsp scallions, thinly sliced (only about bottom half/2/3 of scallions)
▪125g or 1/2c chicken stock
▪75g or 1/4c mirin
▪50g or 3Tbsp soy sauce
▪10g or 2tsp sesame oil
▪50g or 1/4c sugar
▪25g or 1.5Tbsp rice vinegar
▪Juice of 1 large orange
▪1tsp orange zest (about 8-10 healthy zests)
▪5g or 2tsp corn starch
▪Pinch Chile flake
▪Corn starch slurry if needed (2g or 3/4tsp corn starch mixed into 4g water)

To make the sauce, heat a generous squeeze of neutral oil in a large nonstick pan over medium high heat. Add ginger, garlic, and scallions and cook, stirring often, for about a minute until fragrant.

Whisk together chicken stock, mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, rice vin, orange zest and juice and corn starch. Add sauce to pan with ginger/garlic/scallion mixture along with a pinch of chile flakes. Bring to a simmer and reduce sauce by about half – about 2 minutes. Check consistency of sauce at this point. If it’s not thick enough to leave a trail when you run a spoon through it, stir in a splash of corn starch slurry. Bring back to a boil and check consistency again.

Add cooked nuggets into pan with sauce. Gently toss to coat, careful not to over work to loosen the breading.

Serve over rice and top with a pinch of sesame seeds and chile flakes.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro
0:10 Prepping the chicken
1:10 Mixing the breading/dredge
2:27 Breading the chicken
4:03 I really love cereal (ad)
5:01 Frying chicken nuggets
6:47 Making orange chicken sauce
8:37 Finishing the dish and plate up
9:30 Let’s eat this thing

**DISCLAIMER: links may be affiliate links. If you buy these products using these links I’ll receive a small commission.

What’s up today I’m going to show you how to make extra crispy orange chicken at home it’s brighter it’s fresher and honestly so much more delicious than anything you can get takeout to get started I’ll need some chicken I’ve got one pound of boneless skinless chicken breasts here thighs would also work but

Between the two I prefer breasts for this recipe to prep it for the pot I’ll cut it into strips two or three wide depending on the size of your breasts and then I’ll turn it 90 degrees and dice it into chunky pieces that are about an inch across these chunks are

Going to grow by at least 50 percent once they’re cooked so don’t go too big with orange chicken we want a high breading to meat ratio and smaller pieces of meat means more breading and once both breasts are diced I’m going to set them aside and grab a bowl to make

The marinade into that goes 30 grams of soy sauce 30 grams of mirin 3 grams of cornstarch and four grams of baking soda I’ll give that a quick stir to dissolve and then I’ll add in my chicken in this marinade the baking soda raises the pH

Of the meat and that makes it harder for the proteins inside to bond with each other while they’re cooking that means more 10 tender juicier meat which is great for chicken breasts which can get ropey and dry when cooked with high heat once this chicken is well coated I’ll

Set it aside for 20 minutes while I make the breading for this orange chicken for that into a separate Bowl I’ll combine 400 grams of all-purpose flour 15 grams of salt 6 grams of baking soda and 400 grams of cornstarch using half corn starch is a move that a lot of takeout

Places use to get a lighter crispy or fried chicken and it’s for good reason cornstarch gelatinizes faster than wheat starch and that somehow makes for a crispier crust that’s less prone to absorbing oil when it’s cooked and once that’s all whisked to combine I’m going

To grab a second bowl and add about a quarter of this dry mixture into it and then I’ll add just enough water to make a loose pancake batter I’m going to be dipping the marinated chicken into this batter before I hit it with the dry and that’s going to help provide a base

Layer of puffy tempura like friedness and also it’s going to help grip some of the craggy stuff from the dry breader and once I’ve got this somewhere in between melted ice cream and wet paint I’ll call it good to go next I’ll grab my dry breading mix and then drizzle in

A rough quarter cups worth of the slurry yes this is a deliberate effort to create some extra craggies when we go to bread the chicken in a second all these tiny little pieces will get stuck to the meat along with all of the powdery dry stuff in the bowl and that’s going to

Combine to make a cornucopia of different textures for us to Nosh it’s going to be sick once this is all crumbled down into gravel like this it’s time to bread so I’ll set the batter and the breading aside and then I’ll grab my marinated chicken a combination of salt

And baking soda’s got this meat primed to be well seasoned and tender so the first step to bread it is to grab a bowl of all-purpose flour about three cups roughly this is going to act as a base layer of starch to soak up the marinade

And help create a bond between the meat and the breading so in goes my chicken with as little of the marinade as possible and then I’ll toss evenly to coat I want every little bit of surface area to be as thoroughly dusted as possible because any bald spots will

Lead to the breading falling off later on next I’ll grab my wet batter and then move this chicken over to that I’m also going to be making sure to to shake off as much of the flower from step one as possible if too much flour makes it into

The batter it will thicken it making it pasty and then things will get stuck together and then I’ll be frustrated once my flour chicken is in the food paint I’ll just jump in and toss it to combine and when it’s fully coated I will go wash my hands normally I would

Use tools to keep this breading off of me but when coating this much chicken I find that hands and fingers are by far the best tool for the job next I’ll grab my bowl of dry breader and craggy bits and then using a slotted spoon I’ll move

The chicken from the wet to the dry a quick toss here to get all of that combined and I’ll note that a few pieces will definitely Clump together that’s okay batter can get sticky just make sure to break those apart and get things as dusted with this breader as you can

And once this chicken is beautifully dusted up and covered in Crags like this I’m going to move it over to a sheet tray and then I’ll get my pot ready to fry for that I’ll grab a heavy bottom pot and drop it on the stove over medium

High heat into that I’ll add two quarts of neutral oil I’m using Nola and then I’ll let it heat up for 10 minutes while I think magic spoon for sponsoring this video Lauren gave me a bunch of magic spoon cereal for my birthday about four years ago because cereal is like my

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Off your order when I check back this oil is at about 300 F that’s ideal because I’m going to be double frying these nuggets once at a low Temp and once at a high temp now carefully using my spider I’m going to lower in all of

My breaded chicken try and spread it out so that it’s not all sitting in a pile in the oil that can mess up the breading and once everything’s in the pot I’ll come back with my spider and carefully push things around to make sure that none of this chicken is stuck to the

Bottom of the pot or to each other and don’t push too hard because that could also mess up the breading and once things are loose in here I’m going to fry for four to five minutes in total at 300f I’m double frying here to get extra crispy chicken remember this chicken is

Gonna end up in a sticky wet sauce so we kind of need to over compensate with the crispiness so even when it’s sogged up with sauce we still get a ton of crunch and after only about four to five minutes of frying I’m gonna come back

And take a look as you can see it’s pretty blonde but the breading does look set up so I’m going to lift it out of the pot and move it over to a wire rack to drain while those rests I’m going to raise the heat to medium M High to bring

This oil up to 350f and once it is I will once again very carefully lower in my chicken nugs using my spider this higher heat fry is going to be all about dehydrating that crust as much as possible that’s what leads to crispiness you’ll notice that the oil is much

Louder and much bubblier this time around that’s because some of the resting juices are coming out of the chicken and frying off and bubbling up nothing to worry about as long as your pot is no more than halfway full of oil also this second round gets Brown pretty

Fast so stay frosty and check back in about 90 seconds ah these are so crispy looking look at that crack and that one that’s a Crag from here I’m gonna move these over to a low oven to stay toasty while I make my sauce for that over medium-high heat

Into a large non-stick pan I’ll add a generous squeezer of neutral oil about 30 grams worth then in goes 10 grams of grated garlic 10 grams of grated Ginger and then 20 grams of thinly sliced scallions I hit the ginger and the garlic on my microplane because I find

That stuff melts into this sauce a lot better when it’s grated as opposed to rough chopped for the scallions I cut mostly the bottoms the green stuff tends to get slimy when it’s cooked hard and it’s pretty yuck now I’ll fry these aromatics for about a minute or so and

Once they’re softened and starting to take on some color like this I’ll add in all of my sauce ingredients what are those well that’s 125 grams of chicken stock 75 grams of mirin 50 grams of soy sauce 10 grams of sesame oil 50 grams of sugar and then 25 grams of rice vinegar

And for the orange part I’m gonna grab one large orange and my microplane and zest it eight to ten times I’m specific about out that because the aromatic quality of the zest is great but a little bit goes a very long way too much and it’s going to taste bitter and soapy

And ruin the entire dish finally I’m going to cut this orange into eighths and then using my lemon juicer I’m going to juice it in with everything else lastly I’ll add in a provisional 5 grams of cornstarch and then mix everything together I say provisional because the

Thickening is always going to be a little bit different when it comes to cornstarch and we probably need to adjust it later on back at the stove I’ll add in a strong pinch of chili flakes to bring some heat and then I’ll bring this sauce up to a simmer and

Reduce it by about half that’s going to take about two minutes now at this point we have the volume of sauce that we’re looking for and it tastes great but it’s still a little bit too thin orange chicken needs some grip so the move for that is to sneak in a touch more

Cornstarch in the form of slurry I’m adding in maybe two more grams of starch in total I’ll stir that in and give it a second to boil so that it can thicken and that looks perfect the sauce holds itself up a little bit but still looks thick enough to grab onto the chicken

Speaking of that I’ll grab my wire rack full of chicken and out of the oven and slide those nuggets into the pan oops I’ll just grab that one behind the pan check out my arm hair burn and don’t do that step one turn off the heat step two

Snatch the Nugget step three and it goes now to finish I’ll give this a quick toss to get the chicken evenly coated and be careful here because the sauce is quite sticky and too much tossing or stirring could potentially loosen the breading and there we go glossy sticky

Orange and Saucy all at the same time to serve it I’ll throw it on top of some steamy white rice then hit it with some sesame seeds and then a strong pinch of chili flake to heat things up and that is better than take out orange chicken

In my opinion unlike the Maul or takeout version this dish is bright with Citrus flavor it’s very crisp and it’s not too sweet the orange juice and the rice vinegar bring a sharp acidity to balance out all of that heavy sugar orange chicken at its worst you guys is just

Junk food but when made with care like this it’s elevated into something very memorable I hope you try it soon let’s eat this thing if you like making great versions of take out food at home check out my beef and broccoli video I’ll link to that

Right here see you in the next one