Make Unbeatable Orange Chicken Sauce With 3 Easy Ingredients At Home

Orange chicken is one of the most popular takeout items there is — which is why it's a good idea to learn how to make the sauce at home. If you can pull off homemade orange chicken, then you can have a takeout-style meal whenever you want, without spending the extra money or waiting for the delivery. It may seem a bit intimidating and complicated, but you can actually make orange chicken sauce with just three ingredients: Orange marmalade, soy sauce, and barbecue sauce.

Thanks to the marmalade, the orange taste will be both sweet and tangy. Meanwhile, the soy sauce provides salty and umami flavors, while the barbecue sauce brings in a bit of a smoky element. (You may want to peruse Daily Meal's list of the 15 best store-bought barbecue sauces and find a pleasantly smoky choice.) All in all, it will taste a little bit different from the takeout you're used to, but still quite close — and, most importantly, still extremely delicious.

Not only does this sauce require so few ingredients, but it comes together easily as well. All you need to do is combine the sauce ingredients in a skillet and cook over medium-low while stirring it consistently so it doesn't burn, until it's thickened up nicely. One cup each of the barbecue sauce and marmalade plus a couple tablespoons of soy sauce should do the trick, but you can taste and adjust. Once it's got the flavor and consistency you're looking for, you're ready to serve it over chicken and rice. You can choose crispy chicken or simply pan-fry pieces of chicken.

If you're sticking with coating crispy chicken in the orange sauce, you can cook chicken like in a takeout style orange chicken recipe to get the crispy coating. Just replace the more complicated version of the sauce with the three-ingredient variation — or, for an even easier hack, simply buy frozen chicken nuggets and coat them in the sauce. If you have them on hand, garnish with the traditional sesame seeds and sliced green onion.

However, chicken is not the only protein that goes well with this orange sauce. You can swap out the chicken for something like crispy shrimp or beef. Take inspiration from a dish like spicy grilled shrimp with tamarind orange chutney – just swap out the chutney for the easy orange sauce for a quick and simple meal. The orange sauce can even be used for vegetarian dishes — fried tofu is the perfect vessel for an orange sauce coating. You can even make crispy tofu in the air fryer, which makes it even easier to get the perfect texture. The best part? The ingredients for this quick and easy orange sauce are probably already in your fridge.