This recipe for Orange Chicken Fried Rice is a guest post by food blogger, Dan George from Mantitlement. To find more recipes from Dan, be sure to visit his site!
Orange Chicken Fried Rice: A Simple Weeknight Meal
One of my new favorite Chinese food take-out dishes is Orange Chicken. Not the most healthy item on the menu, but it’s so good. So to lighten up my favorite dish, I turned it into this Orange Chicken Fried Rice. The name of this recipe should actually have quotes around the word “fried”…like that. It’s not actually fried, but it tastes just as good as if it was – if not better.
I love a good comfort food recipe (or fried appetizers in any form), but for dinner time with my family, we try to keep things as healthy as we can. And not only is this recipe a healthy one, but it’s also on the table in 15 minutes.
To make this a quick weeknight dinner, I took some help from the store and grabbed frozen, pre-cooked brown rice. This stuff is amazing. It steams up perfectly in your microwave in 3 minutes when normally it would take you 45 minutes to cook a pot of brown rice. Got to take your short cuts when you can.
Here’s how easy it is to put this rice dish together…
Start by making the orange sauce. Just whisk together the garlic, orange juice, fresh ginger, honey, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes in a small bowl.
Then heat your wok or a large skillet over high heat until it’s good and hot. Add a tablespoon of canola oil and then the ground chicken. Brown the chicken for about 5 minutes, breaking up with a wooden spoon as you go.
Once the chicken is browned, pour in the orange sauce and combine it with the chicken. Let it cook down for a minute or two until most of the liquid is cooked into the chicken and absorbed.
Now the easy part – just add in your cooked brown rice, peas, and chopped scallions.
Stir together just enough to warm everything through…and DONE.
Your family will go crazy for this rice, I guarantee it. You’ll love it because it’s good for them, and they’ll love it because of its amazing flavor. That’s a family dinner win, win!
- 2-10 oz. bags of Steamfresh Whole Grain Brown Rice
- 1 lb. ground chicken
- 1 T. canola oil
- 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
- ⅓ c. orange juice
- 2 T. honey
- 1 T. fresh ginger, grated
- ¼ c. soy sauce
- 2 T. rice vinegar
- ¼ t. crushed red pepper flakes
- ¼ c. scallions, chopped
- 1 c. frozen peas, defrosted
- 1 T. orange zest for garnish
- Make the orange sauce by combining the garlic, orange juice, honey, ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and red pepper flakes in a small bowl.
- Whisk to combine and set aside.
- Heat the rice in the microwave according to the package directions and set aside.
- In a large wok or skillet, heat up the canola oil over high heat, then add in the ground chicken.
- Brown the chicken while breaking up with a wooden spoon until completely cooked through.
- Pour the orange sauce over the chicken and stir to combine.
- Cook for 2 -3 minutes until the sauce is almost all absorbed into the chicken.
- Next add in the steamed rice, the frozen peas, and the scallions.
- Stir together just to heat up the ingredients, top with the grated orange zest and serve.
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jane says
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