Orange Chicken

After my last failed attempt to make something with a Chinese flavor, it took awhile before I could muster the courage to try a new chicken recipe.  There hasn't been a whole lot of cooking going on since that incident-- partly due to the diaster Sesame Chicken that went so wrong, and partly due to just being too busy to plan and cook meals during the week.  And I just plain old didn't want to feel like a failure again, so I quietly sulked in my mind-- relying on the fare of a local bar and grill to ease my suffering.

So when this dish came to my inbox from allrecipes.com, I figured it was time to dust myself off, and try again.  I was skeptical-- mainly because of the dry onion soup mix in the list of ingredients.   Don't get me wrong; I love salt.  But it seems that every time I cook something using this ingredient, the saltiness is all I taste in the final product.  I decided not to let my fears get in the way of trying something new. 

(As it turns out, I should have listened to my instincts... the culinary gods were sending me messages, but I refused to read them... much like the measurements on the individual packets.... :-) )

Ingredients: 

1 c. orange juice
1 T. soy sauce
1 packet (1 ounce) dry onion soup mix -- And tonight I learned that my packets are 2 oz.... not 1 oz.  So don't be like me, and pay attention to the amount within each packet.  
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. sugar
chopped green onions
a couple shakes of ground ginger
4-5 chicken thighs 

Directions:

Combine all ingredients (except chicken) in a bowl and mix together. 

Add juice mixture to chicken and marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Bake chicken and mixture uncovered for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  Baste the chicken every 30 minutes.

*Here is where I panicked, after realizing that my dry onion soup mix was twice as much as I originally thought it to be.  I added a cup of water to the dish while it was cooking to try and dilute the mixture a bit.

Garnish with some reserved chopped green onions and serve over rice.

Verdict:  Eh.
I may try this again.  It certainly wasn't the disaster that the Sesame Chicken proved to be, and that much is a relief.  If I try this again, I will make sure to only use 1/2 of the dry onion soup mix, because I think I diluted the flavor too much when I added the water during my mid-cooking panic.  The green onions definitely added a nice flavor, so I will keep that.  However, neither The Mr. nor myself are very big on chicken thighs, I may try this with chicken breasts instead.