Dinner with the General
General Tso's Chicken... who hasn't at one point appreciated its greasy, sweet, weird wonderfulness?
Happily for me, Cook's Country, one of the many many food magazines that we receive, featured a recipe for the General in its most recent issue, and my husband, being undaunted by deep frying, agreed to prepare it for dinner this week.
A word about deep frying. I can't do it. Partially because it scares the hell out of me for some reason-- I am positive I am going to either set the house on fire or, alternately, cook something at an excessively high or excessively low temperature and destroy it. (Yes, we have a thermometer. Doesn't help the phobia at all). I also shy away from deep-frying because I know I shouldn't be eating that sort of food, because it is bad for you, and if I don't prepare it myself I can still eat it an pretend there aren't 50,000 grams of fat in my dinner.
Otis, however, does not share my phobias, and prepared a masterful rendition, although he insisted on calling it 'General Gau's Chicken' and kept talking about some place called the Food Wall. Memories of his former life as a Massachussan, presumably. It took about a billion hours, which is par for the course for recipes from Cook's Illustrated/Cook's Country, but I was willing to wait. It was worth it.
General Tso's Chicken
From Cook's Country Feb/March
SAUCE
1/4 C hoisin sauce (Otis cut down the amount of hoisin by quite a bit, so it wasn't too sweet)
1/4 C rice wine vinegar
3 T soy sauce (we use light)
2T cornstarch
1 1/2 c water
1 T vegetable oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
2T grated fresh ginger
3 t red pepper flakes
CHICKEN
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into chunks
FRY
3 egg whites
1 1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
lotsa vegetable oil for frying
1. Whisk hoisin, vinegar,soy sauce, sugar, cornstarch, and water in a bowl.
2. Using just enough to cover, mix with chicken in a bowl or bag
3. Reserve the rest of the sauce
4. Heat 1 T oil in a skillet and cook garlic, ginger and pepper flakes for 30 sec-1 min.
5. Add 2 cups of the sauce and and simmer while stirring until dark brown and thickened; remove from heat and cover.
6. Whisk egg whites until foamy.
7. Combine corn starch, baking soda and remaining sauce in a shallow dish until resembles coarse meal.
8. Pat chicken dry with paper towels,
9. Dredge egg whites and then cornstarch mix.
10. Transfer to a plate to fry.
11. Heat oil to 350 degree oil; fry chicken until golden.
12. Transfer to a paper towel lined plate.
13. Toss with sauce.
