The Return of General Tso

I made General Tso's Chicken back in March, and it was kind of a disappointment. It was good, but way, way too salty. And a big batch, so it took me awhile to work through the frozen leftovers taking my lunch to work.



I looked up a bunch of recipes for the sauce, compared them to the one I used (Chef Tomm's), and came up with my own. The rest of the recipe is pretty much as in the previous post, so I'll only bother with the sauce here. This is for about a pound and a half of chicken if you like it fairly dry; if you like more sauce, maybe a pound of chicken or increase your ingredients across the board.

General Tso's Sauce
1 cup Chicken Broth
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup corn starch (with enough water to make a slurry)
2 tbsp Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Dark Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Rice Vinegar
2 tbsp Rice Wine
2 tbsp Sesame Oil
2 tbsp Black Vinegar
2 tbsp Minced Ginger
1 tsp Ground White Pepper
1 tsp Ground Black Pepper
3 cloves Minced Garlic
2 dry Thai Peppers, crushed

Combine the garlic, peppers and ginger in the mortar & pestle and beat the hell out of it. Combine liquid ingredients and sugar, then stir in garlic-ginger-pepper mixture.

After doing the tempura thing to the chicken (refer to the previous post for the nitty gritty of that, though I kind of eyeballed my batter mixture, adding egg whites and corn starch, giving it a bit more baking soda, etc.).



I didn't blanch my broccoli in advance this time, just added it to the sauce first once we got to the wok stage (where I started some green onions and eight dry red Thai chilis to a splash of hot oil, then added the sauce from above). Once it got bubbly, I added the chicken and kept it moving until everything was coated. Toss in some sesame seeds and a few bits of green onion I reserved.



Garnish with green onion bits and alfalfa sprouts, serve with a side of brown Basmati rice.

This recipe turned out much better as far as not coming off oversalted. The two tablespoons of everything in the way of soy sauces, oils, etc., seemed to strike an average for total salt and total sour of recipes I was finding, and I think the balance worked out well. I think it was good to add a couple chilies crushed up with the sauce up front to allow the heat to distribute while the other prep work was going on.



It might could use a bit more of the vinegar with a bit more sugar, I think the salt and heat are about right, but I think next time I'll try cranking up the sweet and sour balance.



And as a little home economics lesson if you need it, this whole shooting match cost about what I'd spend to order General Tso's from the local Chinese takeout and there are five Gladwares of leftover in the freezer to take in my lunch. That's a six for the price of one and I got to have the fun of experimenting with it. Oh, and I probably took in less sodium and got brown rice, which is wildly more nutritious than the white rice I'd have gotten from the takeout joint.