Is Kroger’s Orange Chicken a Panda Express Dupe? I Tried It to Find Out

Oh hey, do you like easy dinners? If you’re into just ripping open a bag and dumping something into a pan or air fryer and having a meal (or at least the main part of a meal) ready to go in a few minutes, good news is that Kroger recently released a bunch of new frozen family meals—17 of them! They’ve got new pasta dishes like cacio e pepe and gnocchi alla sorrentina; Indian meals like palak paneer and lamb vindaloo; and East Asian food, too, including orange chicken, which I just tried.

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We’ve taste tested a lot of frozen orange chicken and brands don’t always nail it. We want juicy orange flavor, a sauce that balances savory and sweet without being cloying, and nice chicken morsels, not junk. How does Kroger’s new orange chicken stack up? Will it give Panda Express a run for its money? I tried it to find out.

New Product!

Private Selection Chinese Inspired Orange Chicken

Kroger

Pros: This is nice and easy to make. Just cook the tempura-battered chicken in the air fryer, toss the chicken with the sauce packet, and serve it over some white rice (I made some frozen broccoli, too). The best thing about Kroger’s orange chicken, in my opinion, is that the chicken itself is really good—it’s juicy and flavorful, like good, dark-meat chicken.

Cons: The sauce is way too tangy for my taste. It’s not a citrusy tang, it’s an aggressive vinegar tang that invades your nostrils as you eat. Orange juice is listed right before vinegar in the sauce packet’s ingredients, but the vinegar absolutely dominates the flavor profile. That juicy orange flavor is there if you search for it, but I wish they’d let it shine a little more. People online are saying this is a dupe for Panda Express, but I’m not totally convinced.

Credit: Kroger

Rating:

7/10

Sporks

About the Author

Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks. Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown. What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction. Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home. Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.