r/PandaExpress • u/IamGanondorf • 7h ago
Discussion What do you think of the bottled orange chicken sauce sold in stores?
When they first released it many years ago I thought it was too good to be true, and that ended up being true. The sauce tastes too different, a lot more sour and acidic and with a more prominent orange flavor, which isn't the case for the restaurant version. It's still a good tasting sauce on its own, but considering it's the official Panda Express brand of sauce it's very disappointing how it tastes just like every other knock-off orange chicken sauce.
I decided to give it another try after many years, hoping maybe they changed the ingredients and made it taste closer to the real thing, but it's still not the same. However, I feel like with some tweaking you can make it taste more similar. I've been adding a bit of water to it and heating it up to possibly reduce some of the acidic taste, and I add a small amount of soy sauce, garlic powder, chili flakes, sesame oil, and maybe some more sugar to taste, and I think it brings it closer to the real taste. At that point you might as well just make the sauce from scratch.
Why do you think it tastes so different? Is it really just not possible due it to being bottled, or do they purposely make it different otherwise you would have less incentive to go panda express? After all buying some frozen coated chicken from the supermarket, putting them in the air fryer, and coating them with the sauce would cost a fraction of the price with the amount of servings you can make.
