Skinny Orange Chicken
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Do you love the taste of orange chicken but would rather skip the extra carbs and fat typically found in the fried breading? Then you're going to LOVE this recipe! Here's the "skinny" --- this meal is all flavor and no fat (except what is found naturally in the chicken, of course). There are plenty of carbs in the sauce; that's the price of not drowning your chicken in orange soup. So if you're willing to take that, you can drown your taste buds in what may be the healthiest tastiest orange chicken ever placed in mouth!
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Ingredients
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup orange juice 1/2 cup honey 1/3 cup soy sauce 1/3 cup cornstarch 1/2 tsp ground ginger 1 lb boneless chicken breast |
Prep Time: 15 minutes
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[Lower-carb version = replace half of the honey with no-sugar orange marmalade.]
Directions
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Cut the chicken into small chunks and thoroughly cook.
I like doing this step first because it allows me to place the chicken with the sauce as it cooks in the slow cooker, soaking up all the wonderful orange flavor of the sauce while becoming almost-melt-in-your-mouth tender. But if that's not your thing, feel free to cook the chicken later and then combine with the sauce. |
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Combine sauce ingredients in mixing bowl, making sure to add the cornstarch last.
If you add the cornstarch first and then the liquids last, the cornstarch will very quickly solidify at the bottom of your bowl. That's just fine if that happens. Just scrape it loose and mix with he other ingredients as best you can during the next step. |
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Add chicken to slow cooker, then add sauce and stir so that all sides of each chicken chunk is moistened with the sauce.
For added orange flavor, you can add some orange zest. I omitted the zest because this has plenty of orange flavor without it. You can also add some red pepper flakes if you like your orange chicken spicy. |
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Cover, set slow cooker to LOW, and leave for six hours. It will then look something like this.
Note the extra space in my slow cooker. I have a smaller size cooker, and I could easily have doubled this recipe and still had room to spare. |
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Stir all contents to even the distribution of all the sauce to the chicken.
The cornstarch will combine with other ingredients during cooking to form a "skin" on the bottom of the slow cooker. This is perfectly fine. Just use your serving spoon to remove as much as you can and combine with the rest of the now thickened sauce to cover the chicken. |
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Serve over your choice of vegetables and either brown rice or quinoa. Add any optional garnishes you desire.
I like a store-packaged combo of broccoli, carrots, sugar snap peas, and water chestnuts. I also like brown rice with this meal, specifically Near East Brown Rice Pilaf. This is a brown rice and orzo combination cooked with select spices that match this dish perfectly. And as shown in the pic, I like the crunch of chow mein noodles. |
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