InnovAsian Orange Chicken Review

The search for a tasty orange chicken has been a long and difficult one for us here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. We’ve tried a whole bunch of options so far, and almost every single one has problems. In fact, the only orange chicken we really stand behind is the Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken (which is absolutely fantastic).

We hope that changes today, because we’re checking out the InnovAsian Orange Chicken. InnovAsian makes some really great Asian foods, so we definitely think they’re capable of delivering a tasty take on orange chicken. But we’ll need to taste it to know for sure.

Cooking this is pretty easy. There are three different ways you can heat this up: in the oven, on the stovetop, and in the microwave. We chose the oven, which seems like the recommended cooking method, and it requires thawing the included sauce packet in a bowl of warm water.

(If you want to read the full cooking instructions for all three methods, check out our box scans at the bottom of this review.)

Surprisingly, even using the oven cooking method, the chicken doesn’t come out as crispy as we expected. It’s not super mushy, but it has the consistency of chicken that might have been crispy once but has since been reheated in the microwave. The chicken is kind of spongy, which isn’t unusual for orange chicken, to be honest.

The orange flavor is decent, but not great. Like so many of the other orange chicken dishes we’ve tried, this one leans way in favor of the citrusy orange flavor, to the point where the sauce ends up a bit too sweet (with a subtle undertone of that bitter “orange peel” flavor). The sauce portion is certainly generous, though.

We tried our orange chicken plain, but we do think this would be improved by serving it over a nice fried rice. Thankfully, InnovAsian has some good fried rice options in their frozen food lineup.

This is not a meal for dieters. A portion size is one third of the box, and even that contains 360 calories (100 from fat) and 690 mg of sodium. If you eat more than that, or if you add rice and/or a side of some sort, you’re going to see those numbers climb. Be careful with this one, folks.

The InnovAsian Orange Chicken is alright, but it’s certainly not amazing. While it’s better than a lot of the other options on the market, it’s certainly no Trader Joe’s Mandarin Chicken. If you don’t have a Trader Joe’s in your area, though, the InovAsian version makes an alright substitute.

To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen orange chicken, check out our package scans below.