this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Showerthoughts
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Unless you go to basically a non franchise, non chain, actual asian/chinese restaurant/take out place... yeah basically if you dont do that, you are getting pretty much reconstituted chicken puree doused in... not really even real orange chicken sauce.
As with much modern food in America... its got waaaay more sugar and is missing other vital parts of the original way of making it.
Real orange chicken from a real chinese place tastes significantly different, and varies from place to place if they actually make the sauce on site. Usually a different medley of spices and oils... way more flavorful than extremely sweet orangeness.
Orange chicken is not a traditional food in China. It was invented in the USA at chinese take out restaurants using locally available ingredients.
I thought this too, especially after I lived in China for years, but I just went to Southern China and tangerine chicken is a traditional food used for celebrations.
Even if you don't eat it, since it's sweet, it's like a traditional celebratory good luck food to always have with your feasts at weddings or promotion dinners or family get-togethers.
First time I ever saw orange chicken in China, but apparently it is a traditional food down south, as far back as anyone I talked to remembers, and it's important to note that in the south, every spring festival every family and business buys a tangerine or clementine tree like a Christmas tree, so likely not an original Hawaiian creation in 1987 or whatever that cook says it was.
Maybe he independently created it, but it doesn't look like he originally created it.
Thank you, that's awesome
High five.
When I was riding through the city I was in, there were multiple commercial rows like 100 deep and a thousand wide of clementine and tangerine trees, it was pretty cool.
Maybe the Chinese orange chicken is actually made from clementines and not tangerines, because I remember there being a lot more clementine trees