The Laughing Wolf

Recipe: Orange Chicken

Here is something I dreamed up a bit over a week ago, and made for the dinner last Friday. Some of the measurements are very approximate, as I was winging it.

Hardware:
covered container large enough to hold whole chicken
cutting board
knife
roasting pan
boiler
skillet
spatula

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
.5 to 1 gallon orange juice
Basmati rice
mushrooms, assorted types
butter
olive oil
honey (sourwood if available)
2 bulbs garlic
slivered almonds
.25 to .5 cup frozen/fresh green peas
chipotle
kosher salt
fresh ground pepper
truffle oil (optional)

The night before you want to cook the chicken, place it in the container, pour in orange juice to completely submerge, put on cover, and put in refrigerator. Roast the garlic bulbs whole, unpeeled. Easy method is to put bulbs on aluminum foil, coat with olive oil, wrap well in the aluminum foil, and put in toaster over at app. 350 degrees for a few hours. You can also go ahead and prepare 1 cup of dry Basmati rice per directions, store in refrigerator. I used white truffle oil in the rice.

Before cooking, clean, slice or chunk, and saute mushrooms in olive oil and butter. Add some of the mushrooms to the rice, along with slivered almonds (anywhere from a few to .5 cup) and peas. Cut tops of roasted garlic bulbs and squeeze roasted garlic into the mixture. Add pinch of salt and some fresh ground pepper. Use this to stuff the chicken. Pull the chicken from the orange juice, stuff, and place in roasting pan.

Combine app. 1 cup of honey with .5 cup of the Grand Mariner and 1t - 3T of good chipotle powder. Mix well, and brush this on the chicken. Cover, and cook for one hour at 350 degrees. Uncover, brush more mixture on (or pull up from bottom of roasting pan and baste), and cook app. one more hour until temperature at the center of the chicken/stuffing is at least 160 degrees, basting often.

An interesting option is to put loads of slivered almond in the bottom of the roasting pan, and let them cook in the juices and glaze.

Enjoy!

LW