"Homemade" General Tso/Gao Chicken?

February 20, 2022 8:49 AM

I enjoy General Tso's Chicken. However it's not cheap and I'm trying to eat less non-home grown chicken for a variety of reasons. So I figured I could use vegetarian chicken bites and trying out store bought sauces to make my own.

I know I could theoretically make the sauce on my own but I'm not likely to, especially not on the regular. I've tried Iron Chef's sauce and it's not bad but I think it's a little sweeter than I want?

Currently, the General Tso chicken I've eaten the most is the kind you get from the Safeway deli section so if anyone knows what kind of sauce they use, that would probably be the closest to what I'm looking for. Otherwise, any suggestions for a store bought General Tso's sauce that's on the sweet side but has a kick to it? All the online review sites I've found seem pretty scammy so it's hard to tell if the information in them is useful.

Thanks!

posted by macfly to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

Best answer: I've tried Trader Joe's and it's fine. Too hot for my taste, but I don't like hot food at all.
posted by DMelanogaster at 8:55 AM on February 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you were going to make the sauce, you could do a lot worst than the Serious Eats version. The ingredients (or its one substitute) should be available at most grocery stores. The sauce making steps are:

Combine sugar, chicken stock, soy sauce, wine, vinegar, cornstarch, and sesame oil in a small bowl and stir with a fork until cornstarch is dissolved and no lumps remain. Set aside.

Combine oil, garlic, ginger, minced scallions, and red chilies in a large skillet and place over medium heat. Cook, stirring, until vegetables are aromatic and soft, but not browned, about 3 minutes. Stir sauce mixture and add to skillet, making sure to scrape out any sugar or starch that has sunk to the bottom of bowl. Cook, stirring, until sauce boils and thickens, about 1 minute. Add scallion segments. Transfer sauce to a bowl to stop cooking.

posted by mmascolino at 9:05 AM on February 20, 2022 [8 favorites]

As said above, most General Tso's sauces aren't too exotic. I've had luck making recipes from Made With Lau, and they did General Tso's Chicken (YouTube video) if you decide to go all in!
posted by Fortran at 10:20 AM on February 20, 2022

Best answer: I feel like everybody's General Tso sauce is a little too sweet and never really hot enough for me, so I decant some to a bowl and stir in a tiny jot of chicken-flavor Better Than Bouillon (BTB's got various non-meat flavors and if you can get your hands on their roasted garlic flavor that's even better than the veg or not-meat ones), a squirt of sriracha (a dab of tomato paste from a tube would work here), and a little drizzle of soy sauce, sesame oil, shouxing wine and/or Chinese black vinegar depending on my mood and whether I feel like reaching up into the high cabinet where all my tall bottles of actual Asian sauces live - all of them will help bring the sweetness down and they all improve the fragrance of the sauce, and this whole process takes 90 seconds at most.

Just because of where I generally shop, I'm usually using Aldi's Fusia brand General Tso's but I used to only be able to get House of Tsang's and it worked either way.

I cannot say enough about how freaking good this sauce is on roasted cauliflower, broccoli, tofu - probably chunks of styrofoam would be delicious with enough sauce. So to make bigger batches I will use some kind of breaded notchicken product but pad it way out with vegetables and tofu too.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:58 AM on February 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Not exactly answering your question, but I just discovered a recipe site The Woks of Life that has a collection of “Chinese Takeout” recipes from the father who was a cook in an American Chinese Restaurant. I’ve made a few and they were excellent and much less oily than Chinese takeout I usually get. You can skip the special Chinese wine, and the other ingredients are easy to find or you might already have. Here’s the General’s recipe.
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:05 AM on February 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

Confirming that the Serious Eats and Woks of Life recipes will both result in a close approximation of the restaurant dish. The most difficult part to get right is the deep frying - it's got to be a good fry consistency to maintain that bit of crunch when the sauce goes on.
posted by conifer at 3:10 PM on February 20, 2022

Just noting from the OP's question: "I know I could theoretically make the sauce on my own but I'm not likely to...any suggestions for a store bought General Tso's sauce that's on the sweet side but has a kick to it?"
posted by eponym at 3:54 PM on February 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I don't have specific suggestions for a store-bought sauce, but when you do find one, here's a thing: one of the things I do when I want to cut the sweetness of an asian-style sauce is to mix some sriracha or sambal oelek into it. That'll add a little heat and diminish the sweetness, but won't overpower the flavor of the sauce.
posted by pdb at 4:23 PM on February 20, 2022

Best answer: I like the Aldi's version, though I do usually add a bit of hot red pepper to the stir fry.
posted by hworth at 8:28 AM on February 21, 2022

Response by poster: Sounds like the answer is to add some spice to a store bought sauce. We don't have Aldi's around here but I can try the Trader Joe's version which sounds like it might be spicier anyway. Thanks!
posted by macfly at 8:26 PM on February 21, 2022