This CRISPY ORANGE CHICKEN is your new reason to start cooking from home. Its crispy, healthy, extremely easy to make (seriously your children could make this) and outta this world good!
Whenever I go to a Chinese restaurant I always order their Crispy Orange Chicken. I’m pretty sure it’s a must for anyone who goes out to eat. I know I’m not alone in this! But man, let me tell you, all my organs hate me after I eat any Chinese food. Truly, a real bummer, because its delish.
I’ve been playing around with some orange chicken sauce, and I boom nailed it the other day with this recipe! What’s great about this sauce is that you can make a lot and freeze it. The other awesome thing about this sauce is that it rocks on not only chicken, but fish and veggies as well!
Before we get to the awesome crispy orange chicken recipe, it’s really important that whether you cook this in the oven or on your grill/ smoker, you don’t put the sauce until the last 10ish minutes of cooking. If you put it on at the beginning you will risk burning the meat because of thenatural sugars in the sauce. Just a nice little rule to remember when cooking, sauce last!
Ingredients
- 4 bone-in chicken quarters
- softened butter or ghee
- 2 green onions, sliced
- sprinkle of sesame seeds
- 1 tbsp dried minced onion
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup coconut aminos
- 2 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 tbsp fresh ginger, microplaned
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1 cup fresh orange juice
- 1 tbsp arrowroot powder + 1 tbsp water for slurry
Instructions
- In a small pot all all sauce ingredients in, except for the arrowroot slurry.
- Let it come to a boil, turn down to a simmer and let cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent from burning.
- Add in your arrowroot slurry and mix to combine. The sauce will thicken up. If it gets too thick add in more orange juice.
- Remove and set aside until the chicken is ready for you to brush on.
- Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.
- Place chicken quarters on a sheet pan. Put some softened butter or ghee underneath the skin of the chicken.
- Mix together the spice rub and rub it generously over the pieces of chicken.
- Place in the oven and let cook for 40 minutes.
- After 40 minutes, brush the orange sauce all over the chicken, then place back in the oven for another 10 minutes.
- Turn oven off and broiler onto high. Brush some more sauce over each chicken quarter and let broil for 3-5 minutes or until skin in nice and crispy and internal temperature of chicken equals about 155-160 degrees.
- Remove and add a little more sauce, just for good measure and garnish with sliced green onions and sesame seeds.
- Preheat smoker to 325 degrees F.
- Prepare chicken the same way as you would the oven way, but put the chicken directly on the grill, skin side up for 45 minutes.
- Bring smoker temp up to 400 degrees F and brush the orange sauce over each chicken quarter.
- Let cook for another 5 minutes, then brush more sauce on and cook another 5 minutes or until internal temperature equals 155-160 degrees.
- Remove and garnish with fresh green onions and sesame seeds
I really like shredding up any leftovers of this crispy orange chicken and adding it to a salad and using the sauce as a “dressing” So super good!
Whole30: yes
Paleo: yes
