how does adding grated "orange peel" to food make it taste better or not? how unusual and costly?

Question

have been looking at some recipes online for Chinese food...and noticed their "black bean sauce' is highly regarded...and noticed it has 'orange rind" or peel? inside it...and then noticed this is also used in indian food....but the cost is expensive? how unusual? CAN YOU MAKE YOUR OWN IF BUY ORANGES? IS BETTER?

Answer 1

It's not expensive. Asian grocers have big bags of dried tangerine peels for a few dollars, they last forever, and the taste _cannot_ be replicated. That's the ONLY way to make good Chinese Style orange chicken. (Or orange cauliflower for vegs.) Orange zest (that's just the grated peeling of a regular orange) isn't a good substitute, I don't care what anyone claims. Try both then try to tell me they're the same! They need to be dried for ages to get the right flavor.



Black bean sauce you can get for a couple dollars in a bottle that will last you years. Also bags of dried fermented black beans, cheap, which you can't replicate the taste of. Get thee to an Asian grocer... Know and love your Asian grocer.

Answer 2

Just buy oranges from a farmers market, wash, and use a zester or microplane.... Simple and cheap. Get the whole cow for the milk and the meat

Answer 3

Your own fresh orange peel couldn’t be easier. All you need is a kitchen tool called a microplaner. It will take only the zest and not get the white pithy part of the peel which is very bitter. I use my microplaner for zesting citrus fruits almost daily.



Another favorite use of the microplaner for me is for parmesean cheese. Not eh fancy imported kind but the American kind from Wisconson which is less salty and less “granular” and can actually be sliced paper thin to serve with fruit or cut into matchsticks for a cheese plate or - grated with a microplaner for cloudy puffs of parmesean goodness...

Answer 4

Delic oils in the rind - peel the orange - squeeze a piece of the rind in front of a flame and watch it catch fire a tiny bit. This is the oil that adds the delic flavor. you may add rind or oil or both. fresh is best of course.

Answer 5

Buying one orange is expensive for you?

Answer 6

People peel oranges because most of the peel, below the outer zest, is almost inedible - it's very bitter, and spoils the taste of an orange. So the answer to your Update 2 is no, don't do that - it would spoil the flavour. Haven't you got a cheese grater? Use one of the finer parts of it and just grate off the very surface - just the orange part - of an orange. (Eat the rest of the orange, or drink the juice.) What you have grated off is known as the zest, and presumably that is what your recipe is suggesting you use. It adds a delicious sharp orange flavour.



There are ways of using orange peel, and marmalade is one of them, but it needs a lot of sugar to offset the peel.

Answer 7

You can and should make your own orange rind. Most recipes specify that the orange be peeled ("zested") very thinly, so that you get only the orange part.. not the white part underneath. All the flavor comes from the oil in the orange skin. The white "pith" is very, very bitter.

Answer 8

orange zest only costs the price of an orange. wash the outside of the orange and use a cheese grater to grate the outer part of the peel. the orange zest adds an orangey flavor to the food, but doesn't add sweetness or sourness like juice would. orange chicken uses both orange zest and orange juice, which is why it's both sweet and sour and orange-y

Answer 9

It can greatly enhance certain recipes. Others, not so much. You'll just have to try it - any dessert cookbook will have proven recipes. I find it also enhances the flavor of my venison stew - along with cinnamon. In that case, a little goes a long way. If you can actually taste the orange in the stew, you've used too much. And yes, you can make your own by grating orange peels.