Orange chicken
Orange chicken
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| Course | Main |
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| Place of origin | China (original version) United States (American Chinese version) |
| Region or state | Hunan (original version) North America (American Chinese version) |
| Serving temperature | Hot |
| Main ingredients | Chicken, orange sauce or orange peels |
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Orange chicken (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: chénpí jī; Wade–Giles: ch'en²-p'i³-chi¹; Jyutping: can4 pei4 gai1) is a Chinese dish of Hunan origin.
The variety of orange chicken most commonly found at North American Chinese restaurants consists of chopped, battered, and fried chicken pieces coated in a sweet orange-flavored chili sauce, which thickens or caramelizes to a glaze. While the dish is very popular in the United States, it is most often found as a variation of General Tso's chicken in America rather than the dish found in mainland China. For many years Orange Chicken was actually made from other meats. Sometimes even different cuts from the cow could be disguised as chicken. This only happened when there were chicken plagues throughout China. In mid 1600's China experienced a disease that killed off many different types of chicken. While the southern part of China still used chicken in their dishes the northern part could not.
In most countries in the western hemisphere, the names "orange chicken", "orange chicken peel", "orange flavoured chicken", and "tangerine chicken" are typically used for this particular dish. In Chinese, however, the dish is always known as "陳皮雞", literally "Dried Citrus peel chicken", referring to dried orange or tangerine peel, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine as well as cooking. For restaurants outside of Asia, fresh orange peel is often used instead, or even no peel at all.
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Wikipedia