I really like coming home to Crockpot meals. When I open the door, I am greeted by the delicous aroma of a home-cooked meal, and I can pretend, just for a few precious moments, that I have a sweet, wise-cracking maid named Alice who is working hard in my kitchen to have a hot meal prepared for me and my family. . .
Okay, it may not be Alice, but at least I get the hot meal.
Anyway, Wade got his orange chicken tonight. We're talking REAL orange chicken, not the orange chickens that are really pork and veggies. And when I got home tonight, it SMELLED like orange chicken. Yum. Unfortunately, this is one of the recipes that I found and haven't been able find again, so I am not sure what the source is. If I stumble across it again, I'll post it.
Orange Chicken
1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs (cut into bite-size pieces)
3 T olive oil
juice of 2 oranges
zest from 1 orange
1/4 c of orange juice
1 t fresh ginger
3 T soy sauce
2 T sriracha
chopped peanuts (for topping)
Mix together ingredients, except chicken and peanuts, and pour into Ziploc. Add chicken and freeze.
Thaw, then cook for 6-8 hours on low. Serve with rice.
Review
Winco didn't have boneless, skinless thighs, but they did have skin-on, bone-in thighs. So, I used those. I am pretty lazy, so I removed the skin and threw the whole thigh in. It just wasn't worth my effort to cut a bunch of raw chicken off the bone. I figure that we are slow cooking the meat, so it should fall off the bone when it's done anyway. Right? Right. Moving on.
The recipe went together pretty easily. There's quite a bit of juicing and zesting, although Wade did those parts, and he was pretty fast. He also peeled and grated the ginger. What a great hubby.
The only issue I had with the recipe was with the orange juice. It calls for the juice of 2 oranges and 1/4 c of orange juice. I wasn't sure if the quarter cup was in addition to the other juice or if it was the other juice. I figured extra orange is good, so I decided it was extra.
In the end, I got three bags out of a tripled recipe, and I used extra chicken. I think I used closer to two pounds a bag, but I also used bone-in chicken.
This morning, I turned the Crockpot on low, set the delayed timer on my new rice fancy-pants rice cooker that sings me "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" when it starts (no, seriously) and ran off to work. Then, I returned home, pretended Alice was in the kitchen for a minute and checked the pot.
It should be noted that Crockpot food isn't pretty. But, my orange chicken looked okay for Crockpot food, but a little oilier looking than I expected. So, I skimmed off some of the fat and turned the pot to 'warm' until Wade got home. Finally, I steamed some broccoli, my rice cooker sang and dinner was ready.
Ratings
Ease of preparation: B
Taste: B (from me), C (from Wade)
Quantity: We got two servings out of it tonight, and I have enough for my lunch tomorrow. In retrospect, I think I'd make a recipe and a half for one bag for leftovers.
Notes: Throwing the whole thigh in worked just fine. NO NEED TO CUT INTO BITE-SIZE PIECES. HA. Also, Wade was expecting pork and veggies. Oh wait. We did that. Actually, Wade thinks he was expecting more of a glazed orange chicken, which this isn't. It's chicken with an orange sauce. It's not that it was bad, it just didn't meet his expectations. I, on the other hand, liked it. I'd redo it. Wade might not. On a side note, he loves the rice from the new fancy rice cooker. Not bad for the guy who just told me he didn't like rice, apparently he only likes with a side of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" -- oh well.
Update: Pork and Veggies
We did get one more meal out of the pork and veggies over the weekend, although there wasn't much meat left. All in all, we got six servings out of that bag. Pretty good, I think.
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