General Tso's Chicken

4 comments   |   Category: Home Cooking   |   Posted by: evane

I was thinking of a Szechuan style spicy dish for my Chinese shebang dinner for Father’s Day. My mother (who has awesome timing) sent me a link for a recipe for General Tso’s Chicken shortly after. This recipe is based on that recipe, which originally appeared in The Chinese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo.

I’ve added Szechuan peppers, which are wonderfully piquant and give a nice zing, as well as cashews. I also didn’t have hoisin sauce so I just used a mixture of 50/50 oyster sauce and plum sauce. It worked out well. It was sooooooooooo good. I was especially impressed by the cornstarch marinade. It helped to seal in the moisture in the meat wonderfully, and displayed impressive sticking power to the breadcrumbs. More stuckage = less random burnt breadcrumbs floating in your oil!

Ingredients
780g chicken thigh cut into bite sized cubes
3 1/2 cups vegetable oil
8-12 dried chinese chillies, chopped if you like the dish hotter, whole if you are of the mild persuasion.
1/4 Szechuan peppers, crushed or whole whichever you prefer.
1/2 cup finely sliced scallion
About 2 cups Japanese Panko breadcrumbs
Chopped scallions and coriander for garnishing

Marinade
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 pinch white pepper
2 tablespoons cornstarch

Sauce
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons Shaoxing wine

Method

1. Mix together the marinade ingredients and add it to the chicken. Ensure the chicken is throughly coated then set it aside for at least 15 minutes.
2. Combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
3. Heat the peanut oil in your wok over high heat till it starts to smoke. You can test this by putting in prawn crackers into the oil. If they bloom out sufficiently quickly, then it’s hot enough.
4. One at a time, bread the chicken pieces with the breadcrumbs. Pat the crumbs in firmly so they don’t drop off in the oil, and shake off excess crumbs. Deepfry them in the hot oil till nicely browned. Don’t worry too much about whether they are cooked through, they get a second cooking later.
5. Pour off all but about 3 tablespoons of the oil and turn the heat up again. When it starts smoking add in the chillies and szechuan pepper and fry till fragrant. Add in the cashews and fry till it takes on a roasty brown colour.
6. Add the chicken and continue frying till the chillies look a bit burnt.
7. Give the sauce mixture a stir then pour it over everything. Toss to coat evenly, then add the chopped scallions. Give it another stir around till the scallions look half cooked.
8. Serve it up piping hot, garnished generously with scallions and coriander.

ETA: I just had a casual browse of other General Tso’s Chicken recipes on the web. This is not an overly sweet dish, and may not taste much like the sort American Chinese restaurants serve up. It is spicy and ginger plays a prominent part. I play hardball with the proportions and tend to go a bit crazy on the ginger

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Twitter user fruityalexia requested this recipe. This one’s for you, babe.

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