What Pepper is Used in General Tso’s Chicken?

Tips for Pulling It All Together

Start by making a marinade for the chicken by mixing an egg white with a few tablespoons of dark soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and vodka. This will make the chicken succulent and crispy. Set aside half of this mixture to moisten up my dry coating later on, then finish the coating with cornstarch, baking soda, and the chicken.

At this stage, you can refrigerate the chicken for up to a few hours, or you can plow straight through the rest of the recipe with a shortened marinating period. It makes very little difference.

Add that reserved marinade to the dry mix of flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt. The mixture should look coarse and crumbly, with a few big nuggets of the flour-marinade mixture.

You can just dump all the chicken in and then work on carefully separating and coating each piece in the mixture, pressing firmly so that it adheres (you will get messy hands using this method), or you can use my preferred method, which takes a bit more practice: Holding the dry mix in one hand and tossing constantly, drop individual pieces of chicken in one by one with your other hand. As you toss, the chicken pieces should all get individually coated.

You may have heard me say it before, and Ill keep repeating it until evidence to the contrary arises: unless you have a deep fryer, a wok is the best vessel for deep frying. Its wide shape makes it easy to maneuver food and helps catch spatters, keeping your countertop clean as you cook.

All of the normal caveats about deep frying hold true here: use a thermometer to regulate temperature (350°F (177°C) in this case), add pieces one at a time and gently lower them into the hot oil (dont drop them!), and keep things moving so that they fry rapidly and evenly, which in turn will help them get crisper faster.

Once the chicken is fried and drained, its just a matter of tossing it with the sauce, which can be made in the same wok immediately after frying or in advance (see note section and make-ahead instructions below). (I like to add a few 1-inch pieces of scallions to the mix, but thats totally optional. ) A rubber spatula does the trick. It takes a bit of work to get the sauce to coat every surface, but you will be rewarded when alls said and done.

It was a long, winding road to get here, but I think I finally have a version of this most American of Chinese dishes that even the Generals family would like. It’s a mix of different ways to fry chicken and a sauce that has just the right amount of sweetness and sourness.

Coating the Chicken

To start my chicken testing, I scanned through various books and online resources, pulling out recipes that claimed to solve some of the problems I was looking at—namely, a crazy crunchy fried coating that doesnt soften up when the chicken gets tossed with sauce. Some marinades only had soy sauce and wine, others had eggs, and still others were a thick batter. There were also differences in how thick the marinade should be, whether to toss with dry starch or flour after marinating, and whether to use light or dark meat chicken.

I put together a few working recipes that seemed to run the gamut of whats out there to test, including:

• A thin mixture of soy sauce and wine that is mixed with cornstarch before it is fried.
• Egg white-based marinade, tossed in cornstarch before frying.
• Whole egg-based marinade, tossed in cornstarch before frying.
• Egg-based batter made with cornstarch, no dry coating before frying.
• A batter made of eggs and cornstarch, with a dry top before it’s fried.
• a batter made of eggs, flour, and cornstarch; there is no dry coating before it is fried.
• A batter made of eggs, flour, and cornstarch, with a dry top before it’s fried.

Here are a few of the results:

They all look alright, but none of them stayed crisp for long, even before they were added to the sauce. From testing, one thing was certain: a thicker, egg-based marinade is superior to a thin marinade, which produced chicken that was powdery and a crust that turned soft within seconds of coming out of the fryer.

Adding a bit of starch to the marinade before tossing it in a dry coat was even better. Better, but not perfect. The General may have won this battle, but he will lose the war, I swear it.

The other takeaway? Dark meat is the way to go. Breast meat comes out dry and chalky, a problem that can be mitigated with some extended marinating (the soy sauce in the marinade acts as a brine, helping it to retain moisture), but the process adds time to an already lengthy recipe, and even brined white meat is nowhere near as juicy as dark meat.

And who are we kidding? General Tsos is never going to be health food. Break out the thighs for this one (and check out our guide to deboning em).

Recipe’s General’s Chicken Recipe: How to Make Crispy Hoisin Fried Chicken | Food Hacks • Pepper.ph

FAQ

What kind of pepper is used in General Tso’s chicken?

General Tso’s chicken typically features dried red chili peppers in the sauce or stir-fry. These peppers are often whole and left in the dish for added heat and flavor, though some recipes may substitute chili flakes or chili-garlic sauce.

Is General Chang the same as General Tso?

What are the ingredients in General Tso’s sauce?

General Tso’s sauce typically includes a combination of soy sauce, rice vinegar, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, sugar, ginger, garlic, and chili sauce or red pepper flakes for a touch of heat. Cornstarch is also used to thicken the sauce.

What is sichuan pepper chicken?

It’s a Teochew dish of deep-fried chicken that’s also called chin jiew chicken. It’s usually cooked with a leafy green called pearl vegetable.