Cooking Trader Joe’s mandarin orange chicken is simple and can be done incredibly fast – in just under 15 minutes. The dish allows the cook who’s preparing it to ditch the directions and choose one of several smart upgrades to the recipe.

Trader Joe’s Flexible Mandarin Orange Chicken

Trader Joe’s mandarin orange chicken is often voted by customers as the best product from the grocery store. Its fans are rather outspoken when praising this budget-friendly freezer meal and the freedom it gives them in the kitchen. The breaded, fried chicken pieces that come in a bag are tender, frozen, and ready to reheat and be served. The package also includes two packets of signature orange sauce.

The directions for roasting the mandarin orange chicken say to use the oven for the meat and heat the sauce via microwave before combining the two. While most people follow this recipe, devotees know that the real joy of Trader Joe’s most popular item is all in upgrading this beloved dish. One way to do that is to play with the time and temperature when using the oven. One can also cook vegetables on the side and add them when the chicken is ready. Some people prefer to get a less crispy version of the mandarin orange chicken. There are two ways to achieve that. The first is to use a higher oven temperature, and the other is to bake the chicken for longer.

Trader Joe’s Chicken in the Air Fryer

Using an air fryer to make Trader Joe’s mandarin orange chicken is a very popular tip. The air fryer should be heated up to 400°F, and the chicken should be cooked directly in the basket for about 10 minutes until it gets ultra crispy. The only downside to this method is that the chicken has to be cooked in batches depending on the size of the air fryer. This is so because the pieces should be placed in a single layer with some space between them, so the airflow can make this upgrade work.

Simmering the sauce without using the microwave can make a big difference when making Trader Joe’s mandarin orange chicken. Some people even like to add water to it and make the sauce more fluid. The idea is to heat a skillet on the stove and bring the sauce to a simmer. After that, it should be cooked until reduced to boil off the extra moisture and keep the chicken from getting soggy when combined in the end.

It Can Be a Solid Meal

A great way to upgrade Trader Joe’s mandarin orange chicken is to boost the flavor of the already hot sauce. This can be done easily with garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes, but there are also other additions people are experimenting with to make the sauce taste like Chinese takeout. Those include chopped green onions and sesame seeds.

Trader Joe’s mandarin orange chicken is so versatile it can even be turned into a solid meal. While it’s super tasty and easy to cook, it isn’t a complete meal on its own. So, people often pair it with Trader Joe’s fried rice, but there are also other options out there. Some include adding broccoli, turning the chicken into sandwiches, and adding the chicken into pasta with snap peas.

Europa is one of Jupiter’s moons and arguably the most interesting one for scientists because it holds the best prospects for extraterrestrial life in the Solar System. So, it was a great day for science when the Juno spacecraft recently made a flyby over the icy moon and took detailed images of its surface.

Juno Took High-Resolution Photos of Europa

The Juno spacecraft made the first close approach to Europa in 22 years and sent images taken during a flyby from 219 miles above the moon’s surface. This is closer than most satellites are to the surface of the Earth and is a great leap forward in the effort to learn more about the enigmatic world. At the same time, the flyby has moved the spacecraft into a tighter orbit with respect to Jupiter. In the first days of 2000, the Galileo mission marked the last time a spacecraft made a close approach to Europa as it swooped low over its icy surface. Europa is Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, and scientists have such great interest in it because it has a great ocean that seems to contain twice as much water as all of Earth’s oceans. This ocean is believed to be unfathomably deep and considered the most promising place to look for life beyond Earth.

Juno Carries a Camera and Other Instruments

Juno’s new images will probably be studied for a long time, just like those made by Galileo, and launch hundreds of scientific papers. Another spacecraft isn’t expected to make a close approach to Europa in at least eight years, so scientists will certainly look at every detail with interest. The JunoCam has produced high-resolution images of 0.6 miles per pixel and astronomers expect to learn a lot from the new observations.

In addition to its JunoCam, the spacecraft has other instruments that can produce images from the ultraviolet, radio, and microwave parts of the spectrum. It also carries gravity sensors and high-energy particle detectors that will send important data back to Earth.