An Okie Girl’s Take on Orange Chicken

It’s been a little while since I shared an “Okie Girl’s Take” recipe, so I thought it was time to share something REALLY good. This version of orange chicken is super easy, full of flavor and sure to be a crowd pleaser.

It all starts off with a trip to Trader Joes. Doesn’t that sound fun?

For this recipe, I grabbed a few of my refrigerator favorites along with some sweetened dried orange slices and added it all to a pot of frozen chicken thighs and used my no fail dinner trick. Yes, this Orange Chicken has been “no-peeked”. No-peek cooking is my favorite cooking method and literally saves the day at least twice a week!

Read all about some of my favorite No-Peek recipes HERE.

Start off by combining a spicy BBQ, traditional BBQ, tamari or soy sauce and some apricot jam in a medium mixing bowl.

I used only 1/3 c. of the spicy Sriracha Roasted Garlic BBQ sauce because I imagined that the heat would intensify the longer it cooked. If you really love spicy food, add more – this sauce has a great flavor.

All in all, I added approximately 16 oz of sauce and jam ((in total)). Not pictured, but equally as important is the addition of 3 T of cornstarch. Once the sauces, jam & cornstarch were well combined, I poured it over the frozen chicken and some diced onions.

Then topped it with some of the sweetened dried orange slices. If you can’t manage to find this particular product, a sliced fresh orange should substitute nicely.

One hefty pinch of salt and black pepper and into the oven this meal went. Covered at 275° for 6 hours is all the cooking technique necessary for this delicious meal.

Simply serve over some steamed brown rice ((I picked this rice up in the Trader Joe’s freezer section – but feel free to use dried rice)) or white — depending on what you have on hand.

Although the oranges were edible, they were rather strong, so I picked them out before eating. But they imparted the most delightful, sweet orange flavor throughout this meal. I highly recommend grabbing them the next time you head to TJ’s.

This Okie Girl’s Take on Orange Chicken was a complete success according to my herd. Just enough kick, but balanced with sweet citrus and smoky BBQ. I will be making this again soon!