Asian Lemon Chicken:
Lemon Chicken that is delicious and easy to make, with just the right sweet and tangy! Not too much sweet and not too much vinegar.
This lemon chicken makes for a great take-out fake-out, pair it with homemade egg drop soup, some delicious easy fried rice, and these pineapple egg rolls for a complete meal.
Asian Lemon Chicken
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I am a huge fan of the fast, tasty, and take-out inspired Asian dish, and one of our favorite menu items at the local chinese place we visit is their lemon chicken. They make this amazingly tangy, but still sweet enough to want to drink lemon sauce that they use on both their lemon chicken and their fried wontons. I love it. Love it.
But at about $16 a plate, it is not very economical to take the family out for lemon chicken. So, I searched out recipes and tried a million, to find my favorite one, and the inspiration for the creation of this version was from Damn Delicious. I make some alterations, and make it fit what our family likes, and what I typically have in my cupboard. It is super good, comes together in under 30 minutes, and costs way less than $16 a plate.
If you want to speed things up with this dish, feel free to just dredge your chicken in flour, and skip the second dredging. That just makes it nice and crispy, and gives it a good crust to catch the yummy, tangy, tasty lemon sauce.
Also, I purchased a small kitchen fryer a few years ago, and get a ton of use out of it, and I like that it feels less scary than heating oil in a pan. Is it just me, or is popping grease scary? You can find some great options for fryers here, and they are so easy to use.
Go Fresh and Customize
Also, Don’t use bottled lemon juice; fresh is best!
If you have smaller kids, feel free to cut your chicken into bite sized pieces and prepare it the same way. This is how we prepare our Orange Chicken, which is a similar dish and another family favorite. I like doing this because it means more surface to catch the sauce. For this reason, I sometimes double the sauce, so I can use it for fried wontons, crab and cream cheese wontons, or just to serve over brown rice. Yum!
Dinner Time Can be Family Festive Time
We like festive for every meal, because it really elevates family time and makes my children happy. When it comes to Asian food, our children begin to salivate and become joyful whenever they see the table set with chopsticks on bamboo dinner mats. We are just so festive like that. Or for that special Asian dinner date with my hubby, I love to dress my table with a beautiful Asian tablecloth runner. Now, if you like Asian, be sure and try some of our other favorites that follow.
Other Favorite Asian Dishes!
- Instant Pot Mongolian Beef
- Honey Walnut Shrimp
- Ginger Orange Chicken Meal Prep
- Lemon Chicken with Cilantro Brown Rice
- Chicken Asparagus Stir Fry Rice Noodles
- Easy Lemon Chicken
- Orange Chicken
- Beef and Broccoli
- Slow Cooker Beef and Broccoli

Asian Lemon Chicken
Ingredients
- 1.5 lbs boneless chicken breast cut into tenders
- 1 cup all purpose flour or if you are going gluten free, any gluten free flour works, I love potato flour when cooking asian themed
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- Salt and pepper
- 1 egg
- 1 cup milk
Lemon sauce
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup gluten-free soy sauce
- 1 pinch of chili pepper flakes optional, adds a slight kick
- 1/3 cup pineapple juice
- 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsps apple cider vinegar
- 1 Tbs corn starch
- zest of one lemon
Garnish
- 1 tbs toasted sesame seeds
- 1/4 cup sliced green onions
Instructions
- In a small sauce pan over medium heat mix together all sauce ingredients, except corn starch, and stir until sugar melt.
- Bring to a boil, and let cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently.
- Remove from heat, whisk in corn starch.
- Then set aside.
- Next, prepare chicken by cutting chicken into tender, then pat them dry.
- Then mix together salt and pepper (a few shakes of each) with the flour, and dredge your tenders
- Mix together milk, egg, and take dredged chicken, and dip into the egg, milk mixture
- Then dredge in flour again
- In a medium size skillet, heat oil until it sizzles when you flick water into it, but not so hot that steam is coming off. Fry your chicken tenders on each side until nice and brown. Or use a fryer heated to 375 degrees. Cook 3-4 minutes.
- Set on paper towels to catch excess oil
- Then toss with lemon sauce, which will be thin, but should have thickened up some while sitting.
- Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and fresh green onion
- Serve hot
Notes
Nutrition
Our recipe card software calculates these nutrition facts based on averages for the above ingredients, different brands, and quality of produce/meats may have different nutritional information, always calculate your own based on the specific products you use in order to achieve accurate macros for this recipe.
Organic Palace Queen says
I want to try this recipe. Your pictures look really nice. It looks easy enough, but I might leave out the milk. I think it will still be good.
San says
Can this be made in slow cooker
Rachelle says
We’re loving this dish!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BCbolkCPjo4/?taken-by=mommyimhungry
Rachael says
Your photo is so beautiful!
Lisa says
Sorry to say, this was not good. All I tasted was vinegar, soy sauce and a hint of unsweetened lemon at the very end. The sauce also turned out to be the color of the soy sauce, not the nice light color that’s pictured here. Lemon chicken that I’ve had in the past was light and lemony and slightly sweet – this was none of that. After 2 bites, we threw the entire batch out and had to order pizza.
Rachael says
Oh that makes me so sad. We make this all the time, and it always turns out how it is pictured. I can’t imagine what went wrong. I hope the pizza was good. So sorry this recipe didn’t work for you.
Rachael says
Lisa, I remade this tonight because of your comments, and I could definitely understand why you felt it was vinegar-y. I have adjusted the recipe, and am going to continue to play with it, and try to make it better. Thanks for taking time to let me know your problem, and hopefully no one else will have to order pizza after making it.
Ryan says
Are you certain it’s supposed to be 1/3 of a cup of it sauce? It makes the sauce black and lemon chicken should be yellow not brown
Rachael says
The recipe pictured is as written, feel free to adjust if you would like.
Cathy Trochelman says
This looks awesome, Rachael! You have so many great chicken recipes!
Susan Carpenter says
I have made this Lemon Chicken several times. My whole family absolutely loves it, even my grandkids. Thanks for sharing this.
Rachael says
Thank you for taking the time to let me know. I appreciate it. So glad you like it.
Kim Crosby says
OH MY GOD!!!! SO FREAKING GOOD! THANK YOU
Rachael says
Thank you Kim, I am so glad you liked it.