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Hi Slim Sanity readers! My name is Emily, and I blog over at Zen & Spice. I’m a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist from Dallas. When I first started blogging several years ago, Slim Sanity was one of the first blogs I found, since we live in the same city! I love Alysia’s fitness and nutrition tips (I’ve honestly never realized that frozen spinach has so much sodium! What??). Her recipes always look easy and fun to make and include super healthy ingredients. So that being said, I’m so glad she agreed to swap guest posts with me!
My boyfriend and I moved in together about a year ago. We’ve been dating for five years and I occasionally cooked for him on the weekends. Now that we live together, I pretty much do 95% of the cooking. He does the bills and takes the garbage out and I grocery shop and cook. Since I absolutely love meal planning, grocery shopping (most of the time) and cooking, I really have no problem with this arrangement. Besides, if I left it up to him, we’d be eating frozen pizzas and cans of soup every day of the week!
He really has gotten better about his eating habits since moving in together, I just give him a hard time. I do try to cook foods that I know he loves – including Chinese food. He’s a huge sucker for orange chicken. To be honest, I love Chinese food also. I worked at Pei Wei during college so I know what goes into those dishes. Today’s recipe is for Skinny Orange Chicken that is much better for our waistlines!
The sauce is made out of freshly squeezed orange juice, garlic, honey, a mixture of seasonings, and Bragg’s Liquid Aminos. If you’ve never heard of Liquid Aminos, you should check it out. It’s basically a liquid soybean sauce (without the wheat that’s usually in regular soy sauce). It tastes JUST like soy sauce except way less sodium– per 1/2 teaspoon, Bragg’s has 160mg of sodium. It’s stronger in taste so you can use less than you would with regular soy sauce.
The chicken is dusted with corn starch and stir-fried in olive oil to give the outside that slightly crispy texture, without deep frying. By adding snow peas and serving on top of brown rice, you’re adding more fiber goodness!
Here’s the recipe!
Skinny Orange Chicken
Prep
Cook
Total
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breast halves (diced) + 2-3 Tbsp cornstarch for dusting
- salt & pepper
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 2 cups snow or snap peas
- 3 tsp minced garlic
- 1 large orange, juiced
- 1/2 cup honey or agave
- 1/4 cup Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (or soy sauce)
- 1/4 cup rice vinegar
- 3 Tbsp cornstarch
- 1/2 tsp white pepper
- 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
- sesame seeds for garnish
Instructions
- In a large skillet, heat the olive oil on medium.
- Dice the chicken breasts into 1″ pieces. Dust with cornstarch until evenly coated. Add to heated pan, salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 6-7 minutes, until the chicken is brown and nearly cooked through. Add the snap peas.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the garlic, fresh orange juice, honey, Liquid Aminos, rice vinegar, cornstarch, white pepper and red pepper flakes.
- Pour the sauce over the chicken. Bring to a boil and stir for about two minutes until sauce thickens.
- Serve over brown rice with sesame seeds sprinkled on top!
What is your favorite make-at-home Asian dish?
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Thanks for letting me guest post, Alysia! Looking forward to meeting your readers!
Thanks again for having me 🙂 I can’t wait to get to know your readers and meet some new friends!
Love love and adore orange chicken! This looks so yummy Emily! XOXO
This looks so yummy! I’ll be honest and say that the absolutely worst meal I’ve ever made was orange chicken when my husband and I were engaged. I must’ve chosen a horrible recipe! I always love it at restaurants and can’t wait to try this healthier version.
Well hello there Emily! I’m happy to hear of another healthy living/food blogger in the Dallas area because I had just reached out and connected with Alysia recently. I might be moving to live with my fiance soon to the Plano/Dallas area. We plan on making a trip there at the beginning of March and I was looking for fellow healthy living bloggers to meet, if they were available, so I could find out more about the area and get your take on it. I might be sending you an email soon! If that’s alright with you of course. 🙂
P.S. It’s also funny to hear about you working on changing your boyfriend’s eating habits because I KNOW what that is like. Story of my life with my boyfriend (recently fiance) of over 4 years now. He had the worst eating habits and was the pickiest eater when I first met him. Thankfully he has grown in his taste and interest in healthier foods, partly due to me, over time. 🙂
That makes me sad that frozen spinach has a ton of sodium (what!? why?!). That sounds like an awesome arrangement that Emily has going though, hahaha. That’d be my ideal setup too! <3
Orange Chicken is definitely one of my favorites, so I'm super happy about this version! <3 Can't wait to try it out! :]
This looks totally do-able! Orange chicken is a family favorite around here. Great recipe, Emily!
Oh my yum! This sounds amazing 🙂