General Tso’s Tofu
General Tso’s sauce is a classic Chinese take out favorite! I can’t find a restaurant in my city that serves battered and fried tofu. I can get fried tofu, mostly the puffy kind which I like a lot, but when I want something like General Tso’s I really want the battered and deep fried experience. My desire to once again experience this dish with tofu instead of chicken is what birthed this recipe. It all comes together super quick! You’ll be enjoying your own take out style meal in no time!
Don’t forget to gather your favorite sides! Most stores will have ready to heat and eat vegetable spring rolls, and dumplings but if you’re like me you might want to check out the cream cheese rangoon recipe I published in an earlier blog post. They definitely scratch that itch! I also have an egg roll recipe, a kimchi fried rice recipe and a yummy soy garlic dumpling recipe in earlier blog posts If you are feeling like cooking everything yourself. The dumplings I used in that soy garlic dumpling recipe are just the Naysoya brand dumplings I bought at my local grocery store because there’s no way I will spend the amount of time I would need to spend in the kitchen to do that.
Have you ever wondered what is the origin story of general Tso’s chicken? I have so i looked it up. The dish is said to be named after Zuo Zongtang, a Qing dynasty military leader, but there is little evidence linking him to the dish's creation. Instead, General Tso's chicken is widely believed to have been invented in Taiwan in the mid-20th century by Chef Peng Chang-kuei. Chef Peng, a renowned Hunanese chef, reportedly created the dish by deep-frying small chunks of chicken and then tossing them in a sauce made from soy sauce, sugar, ginger, garlic, and dried chili peppers. The dish made its way to the United States in the 1970s and has since become a staple in Chinese takeout restaurants across the country.
So there we have it. That explains why it’s called by different general’s names in different restaurants. I guess it’s more of a technique than a dish named after an actual general.
Recipe Ingredients:
1/4 cup of sugar
2 Tablespoons of brown sugar
4 Tablespoons of imitation chicken broth or vegetable broth
3 Tablespoons of dark soy sauce, Tamari, aminos or soy sauce
2 Tablespoons of vinegar
1 Tablespoon of corn starch
1-2 Tablespoons of Chinese chili oil depending on your spice tolerance [you could substitute oil mixed with hot sauce and red pepper flakes if you can’t find Chinese chili oil]
1 Tablespoon of garlic powder
1 Tablespoon of onion powder
1 teaspoon of ginger
2 teaspoons of sesame oil
1/2 cup of water
one block of tofu frozen, thawed, gently squeezed and cut into bite size pieces. These pieces should be coated and fried as described in the Crispy Vegan Chicken Sandwich blog post. There is also a recipe for fried tofu in the free book download. If you want to you can always use premade frozen vegan chicken nuggets prepared according to the package directions.
To make the sauce put all of the ingredients up to and including the water into a sauce pan. Cook the sauce on medium heat. Whisk or stir the sauce as it simmers for a few minutes. The sugars will melt and the sauce will begin to thicken. If you feel like the sauce is too thick you can add a little water. If you feel like you’ve added too much water you can cook the sauce a little longer to thicken it up some more.
Set the sauce aside and cook your choice of tofu or vegan chicken nuggets. You can steam some broccoli if you want to have that too.
Place the cooked tofu pieces or nuggets and steamed broccoli in a large bowl. Pour the sauce over the pieces and gently stir everything around until everything is evenly coated.
Serve over rice and garnish with sesame seeds if you wish.