Skinny Orange Chicken Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why is orange chicken so high in calories? ›

The chicken in many orange chicken recipes is usually battered and fried before adding the sauce. So you end up having a dish that is high in calories, fat, and sugar. It gets worse when you insist on eating it with sauce drippings and rice, which itself is highly caloric as well.

How to make the orange chicken sauce. The orange sauce is made from a mixture of the orange juice and zest, sugar, soy sauce, garlic, ginger and rice vinegar. This is bubbled up in the wok until slightly thickened. The chicken is then added back in, and tossed in the sauce until fully coated.

Orange chicken contains 660 calories per 252 g serving. This serving contains 32 g of fat, 36 g of protein and 57 g of carbohydrate. The latter is 34 g sugar and 2 g of dietary fiber, the rest is complex carbohydrate. Orange chicken contains 6.1 g of saturated fat and 154 mg of cholesterol per serving.

What is the difference between orange chicken and General Tso? Orange chicken is crispy fried with a fruity, sweet, and tangy sauce that's caramelized into a glaze. General Tso is stir-fried in a sweet, sour, and spicy umami sauce.

Is Orange Chicken Healthy? Traditional Chinese Orange Chicken is loaded with lots of excess fat, salt, carbs and sugar thanks to the batter, frying oil and sweet orange-flavored chili sauce, so it's not necessarily the healthiest option.

The #1 worst Panda Express order is…the Chow Mein and Orange Chicken. The combination of Orange Chicken, a dish inspired by a Chinese dish called chen pi niu rou, and classic chow mein stir-fried noodles is nothing short of delicious. Unfortunately, if it's a nutritious meal you're on the hunt for, this one isn't it.

Ingredients: dark meat chicken, water, sugar, distilled vinegar, modified food starch, corn starch, potato starch, contains less than 2% of: wheat, orange extract, caramel color, salt, garlic, phosphoric acid, rice wine, sesame oil. *The dish uses a proprietary batter and sauce.

While the orange chicken is one of the most famous Chinese dishes in America, it is a purely American invention, with no authentic Chinese resturants or restaurants in China serving this dish.

In Chinese, this dish is known as "陳皮雞", literally "dried citrus peel chicken", referring to dried orange or tangerine peel. However, the taste and recipes of this dish differ due to cultural and geographical factors.

Serving Size: 3.6 oz. Preparation Instructions: Place a single layer of chicken on baking sheet. Heat at 400 F for 16-20 minutes or until golden brown, and internal temperature reaches 165 F.

How many calories in orange chicken from a Chinese restaurant? ›

There are 1698 calories in a 1 order (648.000g) serving size of Restaurant, Chinese, orange chicken. The calorie breakdown is 44% fat, 34% carbs, and 22% protein.

✗ Orange Chicken

The version of this Chinese-American classic at Panda Express comes with 490 calories, 23g total fat, 5g saturated fat, 51g carbohydrate, 25g protein, and 820mg sodium. If you order orange chicken, consider skipping an appetizer or boosting fiber by choosing brown rice.

Compared to General Tso's, orange chicken usually has a lighter-colored sweet, sour, savory glaze. It's not as spicy-hot because dried red chiles aren't as common or used as heavily in this dish. All recipes ask for orange in some form — juice, zest, dried peel, or a combination thereof.

The chicken itself is also different, as orange chicken is made with dark meat chicken ( chicken thighs) and sweet and sour chicken is made with chicken breasts and fried in a batter that yields a puffy and airy crust.

Peng named the chicken after the Hunanese Qing Dynasty General Tso Tsung-t'ang (now transliterated as Zuo Zongtang). The future general began his military career fighting for the Qing in the Taiping Rebellion, a 14-year civil war waged by the Han Chinese against the Qing emperor.

Traditional orange chicken is full of fats, carbohydrates, added sugars and a lot of salt, all things that are not good for your body, weight management, or overall health.

18 pieces of orange chicken (Fully Cooked - H-E-B) contains 280 Calories. The macronutrient breakdown is 51% carbs, 26% fat, and 22% protein. This is a good source of proteins (27% of your Daily Value).

Panda Express The Original Orange Chicken (1 serving) contains 51g total carbs, 49g net carbs, 23g fat, 25g protein, and 490 calories.

In a chicken breast with skin, 61% of the calories come from protein, while 39% come from fat. Additionally, eating the skin adds nearly 81 calories. Similarly, one chicken wing with skin (34 g) has 86 calories, compared to 43 calories in a skinless wing (21 g).