Cheesecake Factory Orange Chicken Copycat Recipe
Sticky coated orange chicken with an ultra crispy batter served over a bed of rice.
Servings: 4 servings
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts cut into bite sized pieces
- Oil for frying about 2-3 cups
Orange Chicken Sauce
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 3/4 cup orange juice
- 1/4 cup chicken broth
- 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
- 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 2 tbsp lemon juice fresh squeezed
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 1 tsp ginger grated
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- Zest from 1 orange avoid the white part
- Slurry- 2 tbsp cornstarch + 1 tbsp water
Dredging
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
Wet Batter
- 6 tbsp cornstarch
- 4 tbsp flour
- 7-8 tbsp cold soda water
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2-3 cups vegetable oil
- prepared rice for serving (optional)
- Garnish - orange zest and sliced green onions
Instructions
- Preheat oil to 350 degrees in a fry safe skillet. For best results, use a thermometer to maintain accurate oil temperature. Nearby, place a cooling rack atop of baking sheet as a landing space for cooked chicken.
- Prepare sauce by combining all sauce ingredients into a saucepan (withholding cornstarch slurry). Bring to a simmering boil until sugar dissolves. Combine the cornstarch+water slurry and add to the sauce, whisk to incorporate and simmer until thickened. Keep warm while preparing the chicken.
- Dust Chicken: Place 1/2 cup of cornstarch into a medium bowl and toss chicken chunks in the cornstarch to coat.
- Make cold batter by whisking together flour, salt, cornstarch and baking powder in a separate medium bowl. Pour in about ~7 tablespoons of COLD soda water then whisk just a few times until combined, a few lumps are ok - don’t overmix.
- 1st Fry: dunk a handful of chicken pieces into the batter, turning to coat each piece, place one at a time into the oil. Fry for 3 minutes until light golden brown, remove them and drain on a cooling rack. Repeat with remaining chicken.
- 2nd Fry: bring oil back to temperature (this takes about 5 minutes or so) and again working in batches, add the chicken back into the oil to fry 90 seconds or until medium-golden brown and return to cooling rack to drain excess oil.
- Add handfuls of fully coated chicken into prepared warm sauce, tumbling around quickly to coat, repeating with remaining chicken.
- Serve over a bed of warm rice and top with grated orange peel and diced green onions and a few spoonfuls of extra sauce.
Notes
For best results, use a thermometer when frying to maintain accurate temperature as the oil with fluctuate.
This calls for a double fry method to ensure maximum crispiness.
It’s imperative to use cold soda water in order to ensure to proper crisp texture of the chicken pieces.
Double the sauce recipe if you tend to like extra sauce to drizzle over the rice when serving.