General Tso's Chicken at home

I am a huge fan of American Chinese food. Even when I was living in Beijing, the #1 food craving on my mind was General Tso's chicken (the #2 craving was the crunch wrap supreme from Taco Bell, which should tell you something about my culinary sophistication) . I love greasy little strip mall Chinese takeouts where everything is covered in brown sauce and even that much-reviled restaurant genre: the Chinese buffet. As long as a joint can hit that smoky wok hei flavor note I'm willing to forgive a lot. But I knew I could do the American Chinese staple of General Tso's better at home. I used a modified version of the Serious Eats recipe found here: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014 ... ecipe.html

The chicken is cut into 1-inch pieces and soaked in the standard Chinese meat prep marinade: 2 parts soy sauce, 2 parts xiaoxing wine, 1 egg white, enough cornstarch to turn it a cafe-au-lait color. Sugar, 5-spice and white pepper powder are added to taste.


The sauce is also pretty simple. 6 tbsp soy sauce, 4 tbsp rice vinegar, 4 tbsp xiaoxing wine, 2 tbsp corn starch, 6 tbsp pork broth, 5 tbsp sugar, a dab of sesame oil. Mix all that stuff together while sauteing your aromatics: 1 head minced garlic, 3 tbsp minced ginger, 4 minced scallions, red and green chiles. Pour liquid into the pan once aromatics are slightly browned, simmer to thicken:


I deviated from the recipe for the breading step, instead doing a rice flour double dip. Marinated chicken goes into the rice flour, then back into marinade, then into rice flour again for a final coating. This gives a low-effort crust that stays crispy after saucing. Shallow-fry in a wok of peanut oil on medium heat. I also briefly fry some red and green chiles as a garnish:


Toss with sauce, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and you're done. Keep the fried chiles out of the sauce before plating, or else you dull their colors:


All hail the General! Now it's time for the traditional post-buffet nap.

The first time I made this, I had much more sauce than I needed, and made General Tso's Peanut Brittle with it. Came out perfectly snappy. I haven't gotten it to work that way since... and I've move to less-sweet dishes such as Fuschia Dunlop's Kung Pao (Gong Bao) as my go-to.

JoelF wrote: General Tso's Peanut Brittle.

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tell me more.

eating while walking wrote:

JoelF wrote: General Tso's Peanut Brittle.

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tell me more.

Not much more to say. Large amount of Tso's sauce, reduced, poured over roasted peanuts and it hardened into brittle.