General Tso’s Chicken
Sweet with subtle heat from ginger and chilies, General Tso's chicken may have been invented by a Taiwanese chef after he moved to New York and opened a restaurant.There are three stages in cooking General Tso's chicken: frying marinated chicken fillets, cooking the sauce until reduced and tossing the chicken in it.
Ingredients
- 600 grams chicken thigh fillets, skin on
Marinade
- 2 tablespoons light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon chili oil, (we used Lee Kum Kee)
- 1 teaspoon rock salt
- ¼ teaspoon grated garlic
- ¼ teaspoon grated ginger
To cook the chicken
- 1 cup potato starch
- cooking oil, for deep frying
Sauce
- 2 tablespoons light soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
- 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- 1 teaspoon chili flakes
- ¼ teaspoon grated garlic
- ¼ teaspoon grated ginger
- ¾ cup chicken broth, unseasoned or lightly seasoned
- salt, as needed
- 1 tablespoon potato starch
To garnish
Instructions
Marinate the chicken
- Pat the chicken fillets dry and cut into one-inch cubes.
- Placed the cubed chicken fillets in a bowl, add the rest of the ingredients for the marinade and mix well.
- Cover the bowl and leave to soak in the fridge for at least an hour.
Fry the chicken
- Stir the chicken and drain into a large mixing bowl.
- Dump in a cup of potato starch and toss to coat each piece uniformly.
- Dump the contents of the bowl into a strainer, shake and toss a few times to remove excess starch.
- In a wok or frying pan, heat enough cooking oil to reach a depth of three inches.
- Drop in the chicken, one by one, and fry (in batches so as not to overcrowd the pan) until the crust is crisp and the chicken is cooked through. Each batch should be fully cooked after three minutes of frying.
Cook the sauce
- In a clean wok or frying pan, stir together all the ingredients for the sauce.
- Set the heat to medium and cook the sauce, stirring, until thickened and no longer cloudy.
- Set the heat to medium-low and continue cooking the sauce until reduced and thick enough for a canal to form when you drag a spatula across the bottom of the pan.
- Taste the sauce. Depending on whether the chicken broth is unseasoned or lightly seasoned, you may need to add salt to balance with the sweetness.
Assemble the dish
- Dump the fried chicken fillets into the sauce.
- Toss repeatedly until the chicken cubes have soaked up the sauce.
- Serve your General Tso's chicken topped with sliced scallions and toasted sesame seeds.
Notes
Story has it that there was no sugar in the original recipe and that the dish was sweetened to conform to the palate of North Americans. Story has it too that when the chef later opened a restaurant in Hunan, China and introduced the dish there, failure followed and the restaurant closed.
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