General Tso's Chicken

From Gwswiki

Submitted by Jpfan01

Ok the last time I posted a recipe was quite a while ago. It was my pad thai recipe that you can see on Gbsfood. http://www.gbsfood.com/1516043/ . I don't know how many of you tried it, but I hope you liked it if you did. I promised in the thread to do my recipe for General Tso's Chicken. I never got around to it and today Tuna-Fire asked me if I would. Well (s)he was nice about it and liked the other recipe so I figured why not. So this is my recipe for General Tso's Chicken.

Contents 1 Ingredients 2 Veggies 3 Chicken 3.1 Breading 4 General Tso's Sauce 5 Serving

Ingredients

• Green Pepper
• Carrots
• Water Chestnuts
• Baby Corn
• Onion
• Garlic Powder
• Scallions
• Hoisin
• Soy Sauce
• Sherry or Cooking Wine
• Sesame Oil
• Vinegar
• Water
• Sugar
• Chili Paste
• Ketchup! (Yes ketchup)
• Cornstarch
• Dried Red Peppers
• Ginger
• White Rice
• Chicken of course.

Veggies

• Ok first thing you have to do is dice up all the carrots, the green pepper, the baby corn, the water chestnuts (if they didn't come prediced), the scallions, a chunk of the onion not the whole thing (that's way too much), and place these in a crock-pot or something similar to simmer them. Then sprinkle some of the garlic powder in there. A decent amount of it since the water and everything else in the pot will spread it out some. I usually let them simmer about half a day, stirring occasionally when I go back into the kitchen.

Chicken

• Next thing you want to do is thaw a chicken breast and dice it up into little pieces. Place the pieces in a bowl and cover with a little sesame oil and some cornstarch. Then place this mixture into the wok and cook the chicken thoroughly. Set the cooked chicken into a bowl and set it aside for the couple minutes it will take to make the sauce.

• If you noticed I do not bread my chicken in this recipe. I find the breading is just filler really and unnecessary. It's also a lot less healthy for you. If you want breading on this here's how. If not skip the breading step and go directly to making the sauce.

Breading

• First thing we need is an egg.

• Next add two tablespoons of cornstarch. Then use an egg beater and slowly mix it together.

• You'll want to add a half teaspoon of Baking Soda and another half teaspoon of Baking Powder (it's especially delicious if it's the magic kind!)

• Then add 5 tablespoons of flour. You may have to mess with this up or down one tablespoon. The goal is to make a thick batter. You'll be able to tell by looking at the mixture if its thick enough. 5 worked perfect for me, so it probably will for you.

• Add in the 1/3 teaspoon of lemon juice and the 1/2 tablespoon of sesame oil. Now add the 2-3 tablespoons of milk. Try 2 first, mix it see if it's too thick still. If it is, add one more tablespoon. Once again mix it real good then add the chicken pieces into it. Now throw it into the freezer for a good 20-30 minutes. By the time you finish making the sauce and then get the rice going it will be thick enough.

General Tso's Sauce

• You want about 1-2 tablespoons of diced ginger. Usually a good chunk off one of the pieces they sell at the store will be plenty. You can see about how much I have used in the picture. Place that in a steel bowl. This will be where the sauce is made.

• At this point you want to start cooking the rice so it finished about the same time you finish everything else. Hopefully you have an ok rice cooker. Mine is about the bare minimum, but it does the job.

• Add 5 tablespoons of Soy to the ginger in the bowl.

• Then add 4 tablespoons of Sherry to the mix like so.

• Then add 1/3 a cup of water to the mix to thin it out a little bit.

• Next you want to add 3-4 tablespoons of chili paste. You will have to decide if 3 or 4 will be better for you. The stuff isn't that hot, so either one isn't going to kill you. Let's go with 3 the first time.

• Next add 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

• Then add two tablespoons of hoisin. What I usually do is take whatever measuring spoon your using and fill it full one tablespoon of oil (I use peanut oil) then throw that in the wok or pan you're cooking in. Now the spoon is coated in oil and when the hoisin is put in it will come right out without sticking to the spoon. Do it once for each tablespoon and turn the wok on to start heating up the oil. Two birds with one stone that way.

• Last we are going to put in the sugar. I usually do all the liquid stuff first to make the volume as great as possible before adding the sugar so it mixes a little better and it doesn't settle to the bottom and harden while you add all the other stuff.

• I lied there's one more little secret ingredient. The ketchup! Take the ketchup and squeeze in a tablespoon or two of it into the sauce then mix it up real well. You don't use very much ketchup but if you forget it for some reason you can tell very strongly it's not there. No idea why, but it helps with the awesomeness so don't forget it. I usually just eye a squirt or two from the bottle instead of taking the time to use the measuring spoons. I stole this ketchup picture from somewhere else and put it on imageshack since I forgot to take one of my own

• Stir everything up real well in the steel bowl.

• Now that everything is mixed up we need to add the cornstarch. This will help along with the sugar to thicken up the sauce when we start to boil it. Use 2 tablespoons of cornstarch. This plus the cornstarch on the chicken will be enough to thicken the sauce well. Stupid box almost being empty making me make a mess of myself.

• Once again stir it up. It should have been pretty dark to begin with, but now it should be a much lighter brown color due to the cornstarch.

• Remember that wok you had heating? Were going back over to that now. Take how every many dried red peppers you want.

• Break the ends off and try to get the seeds out the best you can. Do not worry if a few seeds are still in it, it won't change anything. I usually use 4 or 5 of them. Break them into smaller pieces and drop them in the oil to start simmering.

• After a couple of minutes the crushed up pepper should start to simmer in the oil. As it does you'll notice the oil becomes light red or brown. The longer you simmer for the darker it gets. The darker it gets, the hotter overall everything will be.

• Now pour the sauce into the wok with the oil and peppers you were simmering and mix it up good with a spatula. Make sure to get the oil mixed into the sauce real good and not just let it sit on one side or on top of the sauce you just poured into the wok.

• About this time the rice should be done or near done. If it is, scoop it out onto a plate nice and evenly. The rest of the meal will be going on top of it.

• If you have been letting the sauce simmer you should probably notice towards the edges it's starting to thicken and coagulate. You should start seeing this around the edges of the sauce in the wok. Don't stir it yet, let it thicken a little more.

• Once most of the sauce has thicken and it looks more like this. Give it a good stir and make sure everything is mixed up so all the sauce cooks evenly. Be careful not to let it sit too long or you'll start to burn the sauce.

• The sauce when cooked completely should look like this:

• Set the wok close to whatever you are simmering the vegetables in. Take a spoon with slots in it, so it drains most the water as you scoop the vegetables up.

• Scoop up whatever amount of vegetables you want and toss it in the sauce. If you like, scoop up your favorite ones and put more of those in the sauce mix. I do this because water chestnuts are fucking awesome and you can never get enough of them.

• Stir everything up again real well. Make sure everything is coated nicely in the sauce.

• Remember the chicken you cooked and set aside in a bowl? Grab the chicken and toss it into the sauce with the vegetables.

• Stir it up real good once again and make sure that everything is coated.

Serving

Take the slotted spoon you used for the vegetables and use it to scoop out the chicken and vegetables. The sauce is thick enough not all of it will fall through he spoon and you can always scoop more sauce on top of everything if you like to. Take the scoops and place them on top of the rice you just finished cooking.

This is what it should like when it's done. By now you're probably very hungry too.

Congrats, sit down at the table and enjoy your meal. This recipe easily can fill two people, no doubt in my mind. So hopefully you have someone to share it with and they enjoy it to.

The end