13 Panda Express Recipes for Chinese Food Fans (2024)

FAQs

What is Panda Express' most popular dish? ›

1. The Original Orange Chicken. We doubt anyone will be surprised to see The Original Orange Chicken in the number one spot. In fact, at every Panda Express we've ever been to, the dish is served from a bowl on the counter that's nearly twice the size of all the others.

Opt for a combo meal: Combo meals typically offer the most food for your money, as they include a main dish, a side dish, and a serving of rice or noodles [1]. Consider sharing: Panda Express portions are generous, so you may be able to share a meal with someone else to save money and still get a lot of food [1].

Panda Express Chow Mein. Bouncy chow mein noodles stir fried in a savory simple sauce with crunchy cabbage, celery, onions. A quick and easy recipe made in one pan! It serves well as the perfect side dish.

"Panda Express's Orange Chicken and Chow Mein are considered unhealthy due to their high levels of sodium, sugar, and unhealthy fats," says Young. The Chow Mein and Orange Chicken is packed with: Calories: 1,000. Total fat: 43 grams.

A Panda Express representative told Thrillist that the large entrees come in 26-ounce servings, which is enough food to feed four people. In other words, four people should each get one generous helping of each one of the three entrees.

Two options to order: bowl or plate. If you eat a lot, the plate is recommended for you as it goes with 2 entrees and one side. I just get the bowl, for one entree and one side, just enough for me. Whether you order bowl or plate, it is priced just right.

Chef Andy Kao develops The Original Orange Chicken® entree for Panda Express. Inspired by the flavors of Hunan Province, the dish features crispy chicken bites in a sweet and spicy orange sauce.

✗ Chow Mein

This side dish is high in almost every category, with 510 calories, 20g total fat, 3.5g saturated fat, 80g carbohydrate, 13g protein, and 860mg sodium. (Fried rice is a close second, with similar nutrition info.)

Or the nutrition side of things? Fried rice has 570 calories (extra calories are from fat) and 900mg sodium. However, chow mien has fewer calories of 400, but a huge amount of sodium 1,060mg! Another thing that you could look at would be the number of vegetables in each dish perhaps.

What type of rice does Panda Express use? ›

Long Grain Rice – If you're going for fluffy, not sticky, then long grain is the way to go for fried rice like Panda Express! Medium grain or jasmine are okay substitutes to use, but short grain should be avoided.

With chow mein, you cook noodles and add them to your wok of other ingredients, cooking everything together in one pan. However, with a chop suey recipe, you will cook the noodles or rice and other ingredients separately before combining them in a bowl, serving up the noodles or rice with the sauce served over the top.

Despite their differences, chow mein and lo mein dishes are both made with Chinese egg noodles, which are wheat flour noodles with egg added. While lo mein requires fresh egg noodles, chow mein can be made with either fresh or dried egg noodles.

Pandas subsist almost entirely on bamboo, eating from 26 to 84 pounds per day. Though solitary animals, pandas still communicate with one another through vocalization and scent marking.

In 1987, the chain's chef, Andy Kao, introduced the famous Orange Chicken. The first version was served bone-in but nowadays you will find that the dish is boneless. The combination of its good food quality, financial discipline and the boom in the Asian restaurant category brought Panda Express to new heights.

At the other end of the scale, there's one U.S. state that dwarfs all others when it comes to the number of Panda Express locations: California.