Orange chicken

September 24, 2025 5:44 PM

Back when I was in middle school, a Panda Express opened in one of the local malls. Sometimes my dad would take me and my sister to this mall, and we'd eat Panda Express every single time. We ate there so often that I recognized the man working there, and he recognized us too. Almost every time, I would order orange chicken. And the times when I didn't order orange chicken, I wished I had. I don't know why I liked it so much, but sometimes I feel nostalgic for it, and every time I see a Panda Express, I think to myself, I could go for some orange chicken.

But honestly? It doesn't really hit the same way now. Every time I've gotten Panda Express in my adult life, I've kind of regretted it afterwards. Maybe my body can't handle Chinese fast food like it used to.

But I still get these desires to have orange chicken! I've been travelling a lot lately, and when I was in the airport I could smell some Chinese food and I almost ordered some, but I settled for some Jimmy John's instead. It was alright. I still wanted Chinese, and I decided that I would just make my own orange chicken when I got home.

I had made this orange chicken from Budget Bytes before, and I remembered it being pretty good! I already had all of the sauces I needed so I only had to buy chicken, ginger, green onions, and an orange.

Now the ingredient list called for "1 large orange", and whatever size orange I bought was definitely not big enough. The more detailed instructions said to squeeze out 1/2 cup of orange juice and I think I barely had 1/4 cup! Squeezing oranges is also super messy. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it all completely fell apart.

Anyway, I only bought one orange, so this ended up being not-so-orange orange chicken. But it's okay! It still ended up very tasty and definitely way way healthier than anything I could get from takeout.

And just to round out the meal a little more, I also steamed some broccoli and I served it with rice. It was a very good meal.

Stir fried ginger (with chicken)

April 11, 2025 11:13 PM

Because the ginger is the important part of this. You might think it's just an aromatic. No, it is a first class vegetable in this dish.

I've had my family's stir fried ginger sitting in the back of my mind after my mom made it for me earlier this year, and I've been wanting to try making it myself. And today I finally did. And oh my god, cutting up this ginger was so tedious and my hand started cramping up.

That's about 12 oz of ginger, peeled and julienned. I told my aunt that it was so much work to cut up and she was like "it's not that much work! you need a sharper knife and you need to wet the ginger and peel it with a spoon!" Okay, noted for next time.

I used an equal amount of chicken thigh, cut up into little pieces. It is a lot of ginger to chicken. I liked it, but I don't think the average person appreciates this much ginger. So I think I might scale back the amount of ginger next time. Maybe like a 2:3 ratio of ginger to chicken.

Anyway, I turned the heat on the stove up to HIGH (because my mom insists on always cooking with high heat) and once it was hot, I added enough oil to cover the pan, and then I threw in some minced garlic, about 4 cloves.

And then I immedately lifted the pan off the stove and lowered the heat because it was way way way too hot for the garlic 🥵 The garlic quickly darkened in color, and I threw in a handful of the ginger and stirred that around.

Okay, I put the heat back on HIGH and I threw in all the chicken and stirred a little more. Once that was basically cooked, I added the rest of the ginger and stirred some more. And then it was time to add in all the sauces and seasonings. I added

• 1 tsp of dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp of Shaoxing wine (but any cooking wine will do)
• 1 tbsp of fish sauce
• 1 heaping tbsp of oyster sauce
• 1.5 tbsp sugar -- this is the most important ingredient! (besides the ginger of course)

And then I also added around 1/4 - 1/2 cup of water so I could keep stirring and it could cook longer and not burn. To uh, enhance the flavors some more I guess. It all basically evaporated at the end though.

I was totally just winging all the amounts. I would say that this was a tad darker and saltier (and spicier) than it needed to be, but ultimately, it was delicious. Really, the key is to just err on the side of under-seasoning, and then taste it and adjust.

After I had already eaten a bowl of this, I realized that I completely forgot to add soy sauce! The not dark soy sauce I mean. I guess I didn't need it, but next time I'll cut back on the dark soy sauce and try adding some light soy sauce.

I am honestly so so so happy with this. Maybe one day I'll put together a more nicely formatted recipe entry. For now, feel free to use my rambly paragraphs if you want to try making this yourself!

A weekend with my mom

March 6, 2025 6:43 PM

My mom visited me this past weekend, and we spent a lot of time cooking and eating. I didn't really have much prepared for her when she got here on Friday night, but I did have some leftover shumai and broccoli so we ate that with rice. My mom thought that my shumai was okay, but the texture was off and she said she had a better recipe. To be fair, the pieces that she had were from my first batch this year where I forgot to add cornstarch.

So we decided to make more shumai. My mom said that in order to get the right texture, you need to "cheep" the filling, and she made a folding motion with her hands. (I know she was saying something in Chinese, but as of right now, I have no idea what the Chinese character is for "cheep", but I think it basically means "to knead". If I ever figure it out later, I'll update this post) Mixing the filling with my hands is much easier than using chopsticks. She also mentioned that we needed to add the oil last, after we already mixed everything else.

I'll admit, the batch we made together was a lot better than the one I made on my own.

Because I wanted to have some vegetables to go with this, I also made some brussels sprouts and bacon, which I know doesn't really make sense with Asian food, but I already had all the ingredients for it.

We didn't have all the ingredients for the shumai, so we needed to go to the store for that. I wanted to check out one of the newest Asian stores. The last time I went there, it was really empty and it seemed like they were still stocking the shelves, but this time it was actually really nice!

My mom noticed that shelled peanuts were being sold for a good price, so we bought a bag of those, and my mom roasted them later. And then we saw some peanuts in the shell, and my mom said that that was also a good price, so we boiled those!

But the best deal that we saw at the store was some sad looking grapefruits that were being sold for 99 cents each! My mom told me that these grapefruit were perfectly fine, even better than the nice looking ones because it has more time to ripen and get sweeter. So we bought all of the discounted grapefruit.

And I agree, that sad looking grapefruit was delicious.

But you know what was the most delicious thing I had this weekend? It was my mom's ginger chicken stir fry. I had specifically asked her if she could make it and also teach me how to make it. So I'm gonna try this on my own at some point!

I've looked up ginger chicken stir fry recipes on google, but none of them are what I'm looking for. Most people cook with very small amounts of ginger, just to infuse its flavor in the dish, but not here. Ginger is a first class vegetable. And that means that we need just as much ginger as chicken in this recipe. Honestly, I wish we could have added more ginger.

But I'll go on more about ginger in a future post. Since my mom was helping me a lot with making food, I wanted to make sure I made her some fresh food of my own. My mom really likes carrot cake, so I made her some carrot cake muffins. She thought they were a little too sweet for her taste, but she still liked them!

And finally, I made her some scallion noodles. I wasn't sure if she was going to like this, but after she took a bite she said "Not bad! Can I add sriracha to this?"

So all in all, it was a successful weekend with lots of yummy food.

Eating more veggies

December 17, 2023 7:43 PM

I tried to eat a little bit healthier during my second week of meal prepping. That meant less meat and more veggies. First, I decided to make Mediterranean hummus bowls. I already had feta and olives from a meal last week. I also had a bunch of cilantro, and I thought that would go well in the hummus. Cilantro jalapeno hummus is one of my favorites (: And I also made pickled onions! I didn't realize how easy it was to make pickled onions. I should have been doing this years ago. I heard celery seed goes well in pickled things, so it was a good way to use up more of that.

We really like how healthy and fresh it is, and it's become one of my go-to meals to make.

I only used a small amount of ground beef in the hummus bowls, and I used the rest of it to make a couple of stir fry dishes. I bought a pound of green beans and I added just a little bit of the ground beef to make some stir fry.

I really like ordering green beans from Szechuan restaurants, but it costs like $15, and I can easily make this myself. Pretty sure it's healthier this way too.

With the last half-ish pound of ground beef, I did another stir fry. One of my co-workers said she likes to stir fry beef with coriander and some other spices, and I have a really old container of coriander, so I tried it out. It was alright. I'm really not good at just throwing things together without a recipe.

The next meal I made was loaded chipotle sweet potatoes. I had a little bit of sour cream leftover from last week, and also a little bit of chipotle powder that I wanted to use up. It didn't look very pretty, but it still tasted pretty good!

Finally, I'm ending on these udon noodles again. I made a little bit more sauce this time, and it was even better than the last time.

Scallion noodles again

June 17, 2023 5:00 PM

...and again and again and again. I think I made these noodles at least 7 times.

So the first time I made this, I referenced recipes from Binging with Babish and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, but as I was scrolling through food things (like I always do), I stumbled across another scallion oil noodle recipe, this time from i am a food blog. And it made me realize something. I can just make one serving of this at a time. And then if I wanted to tweak the recipe, I could just make it again the next day! (and the next day, and the next day, and the next day...)

This is what I've settled as my preferred way of preparing these noodles:

• Start boiling a pot of water, and when that's ready, cook about 3 oz of dry noodles. (I was able to find packs in the store with individual sized portions!)
• Meanwhile, cut four scallions into strips, about 2 inches long. Slice the white parts a few more times length-wise.
• Pour enough veggie oil into a pan in order to cover it, and cook the scallions in the oil, until they start to brown and crisp up a little. I just use enough oil to cook them, not to have the scallions swimming in the oil.
• Take the crispy scallions out of the pan and set aside.
• Transfer the cooked noodles directly from the pot into the pan with oil. (No need to drain! I just use chopsticks or tongs for this)
• Pour some sugar, a dash of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and Chinese black vinegar into the noodles, and stir it all around. Taste and add more of whatever I feel like adding.
• Serve the noodles with the crispy scallions on top.

Am I even making scallion oil noodles at this point? Or am I just making some noodles with crispy scallions on top? I don't know, but whatever it is, it's delicious. I thoroughly enjoyed every one of these meals I made. But I think now it's time to take a break from this, so I can make other foods.