Orange chicken facts for kids
Orange chicken
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| Course | Main |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | Mainland China (original version) United States (American Chinese version) |
| Region or state | Hunan (original version) North America (American Chinese version) |
| Main ingredients | Chicken, orange sauce or orange peels |
Orange chicken (traditional Chinese: 橙子雞; simplified Chinese: 橙子鸡; Mandarin Pinyin: chéngzǐ jī; Jyutping: caang2 zi2 gai1) is a tasty dish. It is an American Chinese meal. It has roots in Hunan, China.
Contents
What is Orange Chicken?
The orange chicken you often find in North American Chinese restaurants is a special kind. It has pieces of chicken that are chopped, covered in batter, and then fried. These crispy chicken pieces are coated in a sweet, orange-flavored chili sauce. This sauce often gets thick and shiny, like a glaze.
Even though this dish is very popular in the United States, it's usually seen as a twist on General Tso's chicken in North America. It's not the same dish you would typically find in mainland China.
How Orange Chicken Started
Chef Andy Kao says he created the first Chinese-American orange chicken recipe. He made it at a Panda Express restaurant in Hawaii in 1987. Panda Express is a fast-food chain. They are famous for this dish. They even have a food truck that travels around, giving out free samples of orange chicken!
Andrew Cherng, who owns Panda Express, once said that orange chicken is just a different version of General Tso's chicken. He also mentioned that both dishes are almost unknown in China. Journalist Jennifer 8. Lee agrees. She says both "General Tso's chicken and Orange Chicken are Americanized mutations of sweet and sour dishes found in China." This means they changed to fit American tastes.
Orange chicken has become very common in the U.S. You can find it in school cafeterias and military dining halls. It's also sold in the frozen food section of supermarkets. Jimmy Wang thinks orange chicken is one of the most creative dishes made in the last thirty years. In many countries in the western hemisphere, people call this dish "orange chicken," "orange peel chicken," or "orange-flavored chicken." Sometimes it's even called "tangerine chicken."
Orange Chicken vs. Tangerine Chicken
This dish might have come from a "tangerine chicken" dish in Hunan province, China. In Chinese, this dish is called "陳皮雞." This means "dried citrus peel chicken." It uses dried orange or tangerine peel.
However, the taste and recipes are different because of culture and where they are made. In American Chinese restaurants, fresh orange peel is often used instead of dried tangerine peel. Sometimes, no orange at all is used. Tangerine is used in traditional Chinese medicine and in cooking in China.
The original tangerine chicken tastes fresh and spicy. But orange chicken tastes sweet and sour. American orange chicken is crispy and cooked in a sweet, slightly spicy orange sauce. The extra sweetness in orange chicken was added to make it more appealing to American tastes.
Popularity
Orange chicken is the most famous dish at the American fast food chain Panda Express. They sell over 100 million pounds of it every year! In the TV show The Big Bang Theory, the character Sheldon's favorite Chinese food is orange chicken.
Images for kids
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Another way orange chicken can look.
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See also
In Spanish: Pollo a la naranja para niños
