The Easy, 3-Ingredient Orange Chicken Sauce That's Better Than Take-Out

It's almost too easy to open up an app or pick up the phone to place an order for orange chicken from your local Chinese-American eatery. The sweet, spicy, and citrusy dish is a quintessential take-out order, and you can also make baked orange chicken or even orange chicken stir fry at home to have control over the flavor and health factors. But to dial it down a bit and still pay homage to the Chinese-American meal, you can also make it with just three simple ingredients.

That's right, all it takes is barbecue sauce, soy sauce, and orange marmalade to make the sauce, in addition to some sort of chicken, of course. There's a good chance that you already have some of these ingredients at home, so it shouldn't take too much effort. It's certainly not a traditional recipe, but the barbecue sauce will provide the tangy and mildly smoky notes and thicken the consistency. The soy sauce provides umami and the orange marmalade is what makes it the dish with sweet and citrusy notes. You can also add other household ingredients like sriracha or red chili flakes to add some heat, a splash of orange juice to lean into the main ingredient, sesame oil for nuttiness, or a touch of brown sugar if you like it sweeter.

To make around six servings of a three-ingredient orange chicken, use about a cup of barbecue sauce, a cup of orange marmalade, and three tablespoons of soy sauce. Combine the three ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat or in the microwave for about a minute. Adjust the ingredients to reach your desired taste and consistency for the sauce, then toss it with your preferred chicken. 

When it comes to the chicken, cook your go-to frozen chicken nuggets or tenders for an effortless meal. To skip the frozen food, cut chicken breasts or thighs into bite-sized pieces, season them with your go-to spices, and cook them off on the stove or bake them in the oven. If you want to put in a little more effort, make our baked orange chicken recipe and swap the sauce for these three ingredients to make it easy. And, to turn it into a complete meal, cook our simple cauliflower rice to curb the carbs or pay homage to take-out with a homemade batch of easy fried rice to serve with the three-ingredient sauce orange chicken.