You are going to love these pieces of chicken thigh meat glazed with an easy to make sauce with fresh Clementine and Chinese 5 Spice. Perfectly sweet, tart, tangy, and spicy. Serve it over a pop of color with Tri-Colored Quinoa.
📋 What's New In This Post (1/9/25) - Added quinoa cooking instructions, cooking the chicken in a wok as an option, and updated the recipe to use 2 pounds of Clementines.
My Seasonal Orange Chicken Recipe
What do you call the small, easy to peel orange fruits? Oranges, mandarins, tangerines, Clementines? Often these words are used interchangeable even when they shouldn't be. Clementines are a specific variety of mandarin that are usually in stores from November to January. Not year round as some signs in the grocery store may indicate. When I worked at Whole Foods I made sure those signs were always accurate!
Why Chicken Thighs? Dark meat has more "chicken-ey flavor" and it's more forgiving when cook it, so it's harder to over cook and end up with dry chicken.
Why Quinoa? Everyone else serves chicken with rice. I like the look the colors a Tri-Color or Rainbow Quinoa brings to plate. The good folks from Harvard University say that quinoa is a complete protein.
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Ingredients
Here is what you will need to make this recipe:
For the glaze
- 2 pounds Clementines
- 1 teaspoon Chinese Five Spice
- 1 tablespoon orange blossom honey (or any type of honey)
- zest of 3 Clementines
- ½ teaspoon ground white pepper
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
For the chicken
- 6 boneless skinless chicken thighs cut into bite sized pieces
- cooking oil
- kosher salt
For the quinoa
- 1 cup quinoa
- 1 ¾ cups water to a boil in a pot.
- kosher salt
Not seeing Clementines in your grocery store right now? Learn about what mandarins you might find in season right now by reading our post on the California mandarin season. You really can swap out any type of mandarin for the Clementines.
Don't have Chinese 5 Spice? You can use make it a similar blend yourself by combining star anise, fennel seeds, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and freshly ground peppercorns. You can leave out the star anise if you don't have it. I have also used ground Cloud Forest cardamom or ground ginger before too. I would add spices to the sauce, then taste and adjust to your own personal liking.
Grocery Shopping Tips
In order to save money I buy chicken thighs that has the skin on and bone in. From my Costco Chicken guide, you will see that a package of Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs goes for $3.49/lb. For bone-in, skin on chicken thighs it costs $1.49/lb. That's a big difference. Also you can often find Air Chilled Chicken at Costco, which I believe has a better flavor as the chicken isn't dropped into water to cool it when it's processed. This can result in some of the water being absorbed and diluting the flavor of the meat.
How to Trim Chicken Thighs
I remove the skin and bone myself. It's not that hard to do. In fact we have a video you can watch below that will show you how easy it is.
💡 Tip to Reduce Food Waste - I save the skin to make rendered chicken fat or Schmaltz and the bones for chicken stock. You can freeze them until you are ready. Check out my 🎙️ podcast, Eat Shop Waste Not for more food saving tips.
Can I Use Chicken Breast?
Some people don't like the flavor of chicken thighs or they prefer leaner chicken. Feel free to use chicken breast for this recipe as well. I would recommend making the pieces of chicken small and thin. White meat dries out a lot quicker than dark meat. The quicker you cook it the more moist it will be. By making it small you can cook it faster.
Also it's important to cook the chicken breast to temp. White meat should be cooked to 165 degrees, while dark meat should be cooked to 180 degrees. To test the temperature I recommend using an instant read thermometer. My favorite one is The Thermapen® ONE from ThermoWorks. I literally use it every single day.
Best Pans to Use
There are two different options for pans to cook the chicken in that I both like for different seasons.
- Lodge Cast Iron Skillet | Great for getting a nice brown crust on the chicken
- ISUA Carbon Steel Nonstick Wok with Wood Handles | Great for cooking the chicken quickly and easy to incorporate the sauce at the end.
How to Easily Cook Quinoa
For this recipe I measure out a cup of Tri-Colored Quinoa, you can use any quinoa you want. Add that to a pot you have a lid for along with 1 ¾ cup of water. Bring it to a boil, and then cover with a lid, reduce the heat to simmer for 15 minutes. Fluff with a fork and your are done. Easy peasy!
2 Ways to Juice the Clementines
The fruit is so small you can juice it using whatever you would to squeeze a lemon or lime. You also could just peel the fruit and put it into a blender like this:
Since when you peel mandarins you aren't left with much of the white pith, it's not really an issue as if you did the same thing with a lemon or orange which would leave too much of a bitter flavor. When I am done blending it I filter it through a mesh strainer like this:
More Chicken Recipes to Try
Here are a few more chicken recipes from the blog you may want to try out.
- Homemade Chinese Chicken w/Snow Peas
- Leftover Electric Skillet Chicken Faijtas
- Sous Vide Chicken with Creamy Pepper Flake Sauce
Clementine Glazed Chicken Thighs Pieces with Quinoa
Ingredients
For the glaze
- 2 lbs Clementines
- 1 teaspoon Chinese Five Spice
- 1 tablespoon orange blossom honey
- zest of 3 Clementines
- ½ teaspoon ground white pepper
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
For the chicken
- 6 chicken thighs (skin and bones removed) cut into bite sized pieces
- cooking oil
- kosher salt
For the quinoa
- 1 cup tri-colored quinoa
- 1 ¾ cup water
- kosher salt to taste
Instructions
To make the glaze
- Start by peeling Clementines and place them into a blender and blend until smooth.
- Place a sieve over a sauce pan and pour the mixture through it.
- Add remaining glaze ingredients
- Bring to a boil. Lower the heat to medium, so you don't boil over.
- Stir frequently.
- Cook until the juice it has begun to thicken and can easily coat the back of a spoon.
- Taste the glaze. Add more seasonings if necessary.
To prepare the chicken
- Cut the chicken into pieces. Season with kosher salt. Then grab a cast iron skillet or wok and add enough oil just to cover the bottom.
- Heat the pan up over medium high heat.
- When heated up, place the chicken inside.
- Cook until the chicken pieces have browned all over. The internal temperature should be 180 degrees when checked with a thermometer.
- Add your sauce to the pan.
To cook the quinoa
- Bring 1 cup of quinoa and 1 ¾ cups of water to a boil in a pot.
- Reduce to a simmer and cover with a lid.
- Cook for 15 minutes. Then fluff with a fork.
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