General Tso's Chicken
Serves 4 Time Prep: ~15 minutes Cooking: ~15 minutes Difficulty 2/5 Ingredients 16 Steps 11
General Tso's chicken (Mandarin: Zuo Zongtang ji in) is a popular battered-chicken recipe in Chinese-American restaurants, allegedly hailing from Hunan province in China. However, the stories of the recipes heritage involving Zuo Zongtang (General Tso) are probably apocryphal, and it is more likely to be a dish based on similar Hunanese recipes, invented to please the American diner. Nonetheless, it is tasty and…
Ingredients
Chicken/Batter
- 750 g (1.65 lb) raw chicken dark meat, boneless and skinless.
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
- Seasoning to taste
- 2–3 tbsp cornstarch, or as needed
- 700 ml (3 cups) oil to deep fry, or enough oil to shallow-fry
Sauce
- 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 tbsp red Shaoxing rice wine
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 3 tbsp chicken stock or water
- 1 tbsp finely-chopped ginger
- 1 tbsp crushed and minced garlic
- 1 tbsp cornstarch (to thicken sauce; optional)
Vegetables
- 4 spring onions, chopped
- 1 tbsp chopped dried chile peppers
Steps
- Cut the chicken into 2 cm (¾ inch) cubes.
- Beat the egg, light soy sauce and seasoning in a bowl.
- Add the chicken to the egg mixture. Stir in the cornstarch to thicken.
- Mix the sauce ingredients in another bowl, stirring out lumps. Set aside.
- Heat the oil in a wok (180°C or 350°F if deep frying).
- Deep frying: fry the battered chicken in batches until crispy, around 3 minutes. Shallow-frying: fry until the chicken is cooked and the batter is golden. Remove excess oil from the chicken.
- Empty and wipe the wok. Add 2 tbsp oil. Return to heat.
- Fry the spring onions and chili peppers about 30 seconds.
- Return the chicken to the wok. Stir fry with the vegetables until browned.
- Stir the sauce. Add to the wok. After it boils, cook about 1 minute until it thickens.
- Remove from heat. Serve immediately.
Notes from the original
- Dark meat is preferred, but you can also use white meat, or both!
- Serve with steamed or fried rice.
- You can substitute a dry sherry for the Shaoxing wine.
- A small onion can be used instead of the spring onions.
- Reduce or increase the chili peppers depending on your liking for spicy-hot foods.
- The quantity of sauce can be increased according to preference.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:General Tso's Chicken” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2025-06-18, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.