10mo ago

Orange chicken is just chicken nuggets tossed in sauce.

78 comments

Former PE worker. Orange chicken is whole chicken breast and chicken nuggets is like a sculpted chicken pureé
- Physical Education?
  
  Not sure of this is a real question but in case it is, Panda Express
- Aren't a lot of the innards aside from meat also ground up in said puree?
  
  Glad they're using the whole chicken
  
  Not just the innards, but the outtards, too. They grind those baby chickens up whole
  
  Yeah, so? Organ meat is rich in nutrients, most often B vitamins, Iron, and vitamin A.
  
  So?
- Interesting. I thought most Chinese places use cubed chicken thighs.

Sorry, what? Err, yes, of course it is... i mean, its not quite chicken nuggets in the fast food sense, its cut pieces of chicken breast fried in batter and tossed in sauce as opposed to mashed up and reformed chicken anythings battered and tossed in sauce so its a little higer quality.
Forgive me, but it's like saying a snickers is just a mars bar but with nuts in.
Or fries are just potato strips cooked in oil.
But yeah.
Most things are things
- If you work in a decent restaurant, the sweet and sour chicken is the light meat. We used dark meat for General Tso's, Orange Chicken, and Sesame Chicken. It tastes better.
  
  I think light chicken meat tastes better than dark, hands down, always. I always thought dark meat was used because it's cheaper, or because they have to use it in something to get rid of it. I never knew it was because it was a traditional recipe thing - TIL, thanks!
  Edit pound for pound, dark meat is less expensive than light, so cost may still be a factor, but it means I can still hope to find a place that makes a more luxurious General Tso's, etc, with white. Still, lucky for you that you prefer the cheaper stuff! It's like, I still prefer Taco Bell to fancy restaurants that make tacos with surloin slices or some crap - just give me ground beef, for christsakes.
- Do you realise you can make chicken nuggets out of actual chicken?
  Think of them as mini schnitzel chunks, they are amazing.
  They were a staple of our household growing up, and it’s what I think of when someone says “chicken nuggets”
  
  100%, but the context was around overly processed chicken made of "beaks and arseholes" as my mum used to say.
  Also, generally speaking, chicken nuggets are low quality reformed chicken. I appreciate that anecdotally your experience is different. I wish i had grown up eating those nuggets as they sound excellent. However, for the majority, I'm certain that it's the shit nuggets most people were brought up on.
- Or fries are just potato strips cooked in oil.
  well, yeah? what's wrong with saying that? this is not the same point you're making about chicken breast vs chicken mash
  
  The point about the chicken mash is not the main point. Merely an observation about the caveat in my main point that the statement about orange chicken being orange and chicken is essentially just listing ingreadients.
  Like saying cake is just flour eggs butter and sugar.
  Yeah. Orange chicken is just orange sauce and chicken nuggets. Of course it is.
- A sandwich is just a flat hot dog
  
  No that's baloney.
  
  No its not. A hotdog covers a sausage from 3 sides. A sandwich only from 2. Have you never heard of the cube rule?

Chicken nuggets are usually made by making ground chicken but orange chicken is a solid chicken breast cut into chunks. The texture is totally different and texture plays a huge part in taste. Not that it would be bad if it was chicken nuggets. I'm actually surprised that you can't just get orange or lemon sauce at McDonald's because those would be bomb as fuck.

Toast is just bread that has been toasted.
- Salad is just pieces of lettuce tossed in sauce

Boneless wings
- Fruit-flavored boneless wings. Pretty sure sweet and sour is just cherry-flavored boneless wings too

Eh, if you get really good chicken nuggets, yeah. You can find non-fastfood nuggets that are cut up thigh or breast.
But yeah, most of the Chinese-American restaurant chicken whatever is a fried piece of chicken in a sauce. Orange, sesame, tsos, they're all essentially the same thing in different sauce. Obviously, there's some variation in that, but it holds true in general

Orange chicken is made from orange and chicken? Big if true
- I have an orange. I have a chicken. Ungh. Orange chicken.
  
  Thanks for unlocking that memory, gofsckyourself

Yeah, and it's awesome! Same with Lemon Chicken. I want to experiment with a peach sauce.

Wendy's tested this concept I guess about a decade ago. The commercial ran check out Wendy's new Asian creations. I looked at the wife we both said f*** yeah and headed right over.
In the promo material in store it looked like hand breaded pieces of chicken lightly covered in a thick sauce. It was like general tso's and orange chicken had a baby. And then we ordered and it was six of their tiny little crappy frozen chicken nuggets barely tossed in a little bit of a nugget sauce. I never went back to Wendy's.

If you really want to blow your mind, look up the ad campaign when they introduced Chicken Nuggets in the 1980s. It was very much inspired by tempura fried chicken, so nuggets are literally the fast food version of the kind of chicken underneath the orange chicken sauce.

I mean, gong-bao chicken is also just diced chicken tossed in sauce, and san-bei chicken is, too. Beef Wellington is just half-ass cooked beef in pie crust.

Unless you go to basically a non franchise, non chain, actual asian/chinese restaurant/take out place... yeah basically if you dont do that, you are getting pretty much reconstituted chicken puree doused in... not really even real orange chicken sauce.
As with much modern food in America... its got waaaay more sugar and is missing other vital parts of the original way of making it.
Real orange chicken from a real chinese place tastes significantly different, and varies from place to place if they actually make the sauce on site. Usually a different medley of spices and oils... way more flavorful than extremely sweet orangeness.
- Orange chicken is not a traditional food in China. It was invented in the USA at chinese take out restaurants using locally available ingredients.
  
  I thought this too, especially after I lived in China for years, but I just went to Southern China and tangerine chicken is a traditional food used for celebrations.
  Even if you don't eat it, since it's sweet, it's like a traditional celebratory good luck food to always have with your feasts at weddings or promotion dinners or family get-togethers.
  First time I ever saw orange chicken in China, but apparently it is a traditional food down south, as far back as anyone I talked to remembers, and it's important to note that in the south, every spring festival every family and business buys a tangerine or clementine tree like a Christmas tree, so likely not an original Hawaiian creation in 1987 or whatever that cook says it was.
  Maybe he independently created it, but it doesn't look like he originally created it.
  
  No, it isn't a traditional Chinese recipe, but many American Chinese restaurants have figured out a way to do an analog of it as I described, due to many Americans now expecting it as a basic staple of 'Chinese food'.
  
  Thats not true. Ancient Chinese secret is Orange Chicken
- It's pretty easy to make at home too. I make vegan orange chicken often.
  Edit: the downvotes you get the minute you mention the "v-word" are hilarious. Some of you people are so touchy about a stranger on the internet just having a nice time and eating whatever food he wants to, god damn.
  
  Is it the chickens that are vegan?
  
  Cauliflower or some kind of texturized vegetable protein?

standard white gravy is just butter, flour, and a lot of milk, that somehow turns from liquid into a paste as you stir and heat it.
- Gotta have bacon grease to be good.

78 comments