Sweet and Spicy Baked Orange Chicken Tenders Reviewed

• Estimated Cooking Time According to Recipe: 40 Minutes
• Actual Cooking Time (Including Prep): 64 Minutes

This recipe wasn’t a complete success, but it was good enough to try again. It took significantly longer than planned, turned out a little dry, and wasn’t quite the perfect orange chicken flavor I wanted. But it was close enough, and learning how orange chicken is made was a real eye-opener! (hint: the secret is actual oranges, in this recipe, it’s the orange marmalade)

Immediately after collecting the ingredients for this sweet and spicy baked orange chicken I knew this was going to take longer than planned. No way I could pull this off in 30 minutes. But I went ahead with it anyway since I love orange chicken. I also forgot the cornflakes, so used wheat chex since that’s all I had on hand.

Here’s the orange chicken sauce before and after stirring. It really doesn’t look like much, but it’s essential to the recipe!

I felt like I should have made more. Yup, I should have. I marinated the chicken for about 5 minutes, but I probably should have done it beforehand for more flavor. oh well. 5 minutes marinating is probably not worth doing except to moisten the chicken.

Breading the chicken was easy! Just stick it in a bag with the corn starch and spices and shake it around. The bag was slightly wet from the marinating (I probably should have used a new one), but I didn’t have time to mess around. The clock was ticking!

I had a lot of fun with the food processor, chopping up those Chex into little bits with the Panko bread crumbs. Though it wasn’t corn flakes, I felt it turned out OK. Corn flakes might have tasted sweeter, and less crunchy than the wheat Chex which were pretty darn hard after baking in the oven.

Dip the chicken in egg, then cover with the breading mix.

Those chicken tenders look pretty tasty, and they aren’t even cooked yet! One thing I forgot was that I cut the chicken sideways, making them much thinner. I cooked them for the recommended time, but the breasts turned out pretty dry. Less time in the oven next time, and I could cut down on total cook time this way next time around.

Still looking tasty, but  the edges burned a little. again, should have done about 5-10 minutes less, or moved the pan around to a lower tray.

I also made another mistake of cooking the glaze too long. Though it certainly did make it thick (which I was going for), there wasn’t enough to go around for all chicken strips. Also, the thickness made it hard to cover all the breaded chicken without tearing off the breaded coating.

Still, the recipe turned out delicious and made perfect leftovers. This same sauce would be great for a stir fry with orange chicken, or even pork!