Gluten-Free Spicy Orange Chicken
Gluten-Free Spicy Orange Chicken - This Spicy Orange Chicken is gluten-free, but you'd never know it. Great for the whole family - GF or not!
Note: This recipe was first posted on my original blog, Celebration Generation, on January 29, 2013. It was transferred over to this blog - existing comments and all - on 3/4/2021
One of the things that I miss most about my pre-gluten allergy days? Chinese takeout.
I KNOW. I'm sorry! Sometimes, you just need it, you know?
So, I recently decided to craft a gluten-free version of.. something.
What was I in the mood for, though?
Sometimes, being able to make anything gets a bit daunting - so many options.
General Tso's?
Kung Pao?
I wanted something a bit spicy, but wasn't quite sure which way I wanted to go.
Gluten-Free Spicy Orange Chicken
In the end, I decided to wing it and came up with a gluten-free spicy orange chicken... and it was DAMN good.
Really hit the spot, and my full-gluten husband even preferred it to actual, non-gluten-free takeout.
This Orange Chicken recipe has since gone on to be one of the most popular recipes from my “Beyond Flour” gluten-free cookbooks.
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Gluten-Free Spicy Orange Chicken
Ingredients
- Oil for deep frying – we used vegetable oil
Batter
- 1 ¼ Cup Garbanzo / Chickpea Flour
- ¼ Cup White Rice Flour
- ¼ tsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Salt
- ½ tsp Vegetable Oil
- 1 Cup Water
Sauce
- 2 Oranges, Juice and Zest of
- 2 Tbsp Gluten-Free Soy Sauce
- 1 Tbsp Freshly Grated Ginger
- 2-3 Garlic Cloves
- 1+ tsp Crushed Pepper Flakes
- 1 Tbsp Rice Vinegar
- ½ Cup Honey
- 2 tsp Corn Starch
Chicken
- 3 Large Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts Trimmed and cut into bite sized pieces
- ¼ Cup Garbanzo / Chickpea Flour
Instructions
- Start heating your oil to 375F – you’ll want at least 2-3″ of oil in your pot or deep fryer.
Sauce
- In a medium saucepan, whisk all sauce ingredients together until smooth. Heat over medium, simmer until it thickens slightly.
- Remove from heat, set aside while you prepare the chicken.
Chicken
- In a large bowl, combine flours, baking powder, salt, and vegetable oil. Add water, stir well to form a thick batter.Allow batter to sit for 5 minutes or so, to soften the bean flour.
- Toss chicken chunks with additional garbanzo flour, then dredge in the batter.
- Carefully transfer a few battered chicken pieces to the preheated oil. Fry for a few minutes on each side, until golden brown and cooked all the way through. Use a slotted metal spoon to transfer fried chicken to paper towels.
To Serve
- Once all chicken is fried, toss with spicy orange sauce, serve immediately.
Nutrition
Made this tonight for dinner. We love this recipe and its going in our recipe box. Changed one thing in the recipe, I substitute garbanzo flour with potatoe starch flour. Texture was perfect! Thank you for sharing this recipe! Love that its GF. Blessings to you!
This is a great recipe, thank you! I substituted coconut aminos for the soy sauce and arrowroot for the cornstarch to compensate for my food allergies. If using arrowroot add a tsp at a time as it thickens more than cornstarch.My partner and I loved it! We will definitely make it again!
Tried it loved it and the family too and they don't eat gluten free so I would say it is a great recipe 🙂
I'm terrified to fry things after my husband and I accidentally started a fire on our stove trying to fry potatoes... Can you bake this recipe instead or do you think that would mess with the texture too much? I'm also afraid to fry and not know when the chicken is done!
I'm sure baking would work just fine, it just won't give you quite the same taste/texture.
Honestly, I wouldn't worry about under cooking - I make sure to slice a thick chunk open before taking them all out of the oil.
I made this recipe for dinner, it is delicious!!! I used 1 1/4 cup of Gluten Free flour (Trader Joes) and 1/4 cup of rice flour. Although the batter was thick and hard to work with, the texture was perfect!
Delicious! Even my non-GF husband and my 4-year old loved it. I made my own 'soy sauce' since we also avoid soy, did shrimp instead of chicken, and did lemon instead of orange. Very good. Will definitely make again. My batter was thick and kind of a pain to work with, but worth it!
Sounds delicious! Do you think there's a way to make this without the deep-fry like in a very hot oven? My son is gluten intolerant but also doesn't stomach fried foods very well. Thanks!
This is definitely on my list! Since you are local to me- where do you recommend for stocking a gluten free pantry on a budget? We mostly cook from scratch as it is, but we are just starting a our gluten free journey and I'm a little overwhelmed with all of the different stuff I need, not to mention the price tag that comes with it!
Hi Erin!
I tend to just go to one of the Cub locations closest to me. One has a great selection of the alternative flours.. the other has NONE.
Better than takeout! I had resigned myself to a life without decent Chinese food but this was even better! I used bob's all purpose GF flour mix to mix with the rice flour because it's mostly bean flour and it's what I had. Also, I'm avoiding soy so I used Coconut Aminos instead. Thank you so much!
Instead of bean flour do you think potato flour would work? I am slowly building my stock of flours and bean is one that I don't have yet.
It's hard to say, GF recipes are really finicky when it comes to substitutions. It *could* work, but I wouldn't bank on it - Potato flour wouldn't have the protein/heft that bean flour does.
Could you use just rice flour?
I wouldn't, because the texture would be off.