You asked for it, you got it. Our first off-season food porn offering is General Tso's chicken. Fortunately, General Tso, who not only was not a general but never existed, had more than one chicken, allowing me to cook said chicken last night. You start with chicken thighs, meaning you have to turn these:
into these:
If you are lazy and do not wish to debone about two pounds of chicken thighs, by all means, buy the boneless, skinless variety. Pay more. See if I care. In any event, at some point you should wind up with a bunch of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-size chunks.
Next, you'll want to make the funk that you dip the chicken into that makes this so damn good. Get a cup of cornstarch, 1/4 cup of soy sauce and an egg.
Beat the egg, add the soy sauce (no lie, a second egg can make this easier) then stir in the cornstarch. The resulting mixture will look thoroughly unappetizing.
Shut the fuck up, put aside your urge to gag at the sight of this brown mess and drop your chicken chunks into it in small batches, fetching them out all nice and coated with this funky shit and put them on a plate. Once all of your chicken is coated with this stuff, toss it into the wok in which you've been heating up a half-cup or so of the cooking oil of your choice (I like canola; lots of folks dig the peanut oil, but it's pretty damn pricey). It won't all fit at once, so do it in shifts and cook until it's crispy. When the chicken is done, let it drain on paper towels.
Multi-tasking now, while you have chicken frying you should grab some green onions
and some broccoli
and chop the onions, cut the broccoli down to florets. Once the chicken is done, drain most of the oil and throw the veggies in. Also toss in about a half-dozen dried chilis, which I did not have last night and so did not use. After a couple minutes (how many depends upon how well-done you like your veggies) throw the chicken in the wok with the veggies. This recipe has a sauce recipe, but I don't like it, so I used a bottle of commercially available General Tso's sauce. (I have another recipe for sauce that I think will be better, but I didn't have all the ingredients and so did not fix it last night. I will try it later and, if I deem it successful, I will share it here.) Dump a bottle of that on the stuff in the wok, stir it all up, let it cook for a couple minutes until everything is heated through and then serve over rice. Please don't make me tell you how to cook rice.
Bon appetit.
1 comment:
This recipe would work for dog meat too, wouldn't it?
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