orange chicken
Ground Orange Peel
Get out your coffee grinders!
Time to save everything we can to save money. Wash your oranges (or lemons or limes) first. Then peel the orange. Try to keep the peel all in one piece. Then just lay it out on the counter or table and let it dry thoroughly.
When dry, tear the orange peel into pieces that fit into your coffee grinder. Grind the peel into powder. And shazaam! You have the strongest, tastiest, greatest orange in the world. Best part is, you didn't waste a thing from your fruit!
I make mine into (among many other things) a great orange pekoe tea.
Looking for dried orange peel
The last time I was down visiting my mom, we went to a Chinese restaurant and she ordered the best orange chicken that I had ever tasted. It turns out that they make it the way they do in China, using dried orange peel (zest) instead of using orange juice like most places in America. They said using fresh is better than using orange juice, but the dried peel is even better. The great thing about it was the great orange oil flavor without all the sickly sweetness that you usually find these days.