- 3 months ago
Chef Eric Huang of Pecking House shares how he makes General Tso’s chicken. Learn how to recreate this takeout classic at home using his double-fry method for maximum crunch and building a balanced General Tso’s sauce with pantry staples.
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00:01General Tso's Chicken, takeout hero, beloved dish.
00:05Should be sweet, tangy, savory,
00:08and it has to be hot and crispy, all those things.
00:11And in a perfect world,
00:12it would survive being in a takeout box for 20 to 30 minutes.
00:15Hi, I'm Eric Huang.
00:16Today I'm going to make my perfect General Tso's Chicken.
00:22Great restaurant-quality General Tso's Chicken
00:25relies on three things,
00:27balancing the sweetness with the soy sauce
00:29and all the other seasonings is really important.
00:31Two, it's getting the sauce viscosity down.
00:33We're going to thicken it with cornstarch,
00:34getting it just right so it clings without being soggy.
00:37And then finally, the texture of the meat.
00:39We're going to velvet and marinate our chicken.
00:42That's going to give it that nice, slippery, smooth texture
00:44that you get with awesome Chinese takeout.
00:48Today we're going to cook with chicken breast.
00:50So when we're looking for a chicken breast at the store,
00:54ideally the tender is intact.
00:56It's not too shredded up back here.
00:58There's not too many kind of bruises or discoloration.
01:01And the front is nice and smooth as well.
01:04So as you can see, this chicken breast is tapering.
01:06And we just want the pieces to be as uniform as possible.
01:09So we're conscious of the fact that the chicken breast gets thinner over here.
01:13It's never going to be perfect,
01:14but you try your best to make this cut as uniform as this cut.
01:17So I like flipping it rib-side up because that way I can see
01:22where the natural grains of the muscle are.
01:24So here where the tenderloin was, you can use a cleaver,
01:27you can use a regular knife.
01:28But when cooking Chinese food, I like to use a cleaver.
01:30It just feels right.
01:32So I cut along here the tenderloin part.
01:36And then I kind of cut another line here.
01:40And that way I have three even pieces.
01:42So we're going to cut this into roughly one and a half inch cubes chunks, if you will.
01:48I think that's the perfect size to where the ratio of sauce to batter to protein is just right.
01:54I grew up in a Chinese restaurant, still there on Long Island.
01:57My mom's still doing it.
01:59She probably should slow down a little bit, but she's in there.
02:02When I was a kid, I was the kid doing homework at the counter and the bar,
02:07you know, but not really doing homework.
02:09I ate a lot of sesame chicken and general sauce chicken.
02:12Placating children with fried sweet things is a tale as old as time.
02:17We're going to velvet this thing.
02:19So velveting, by my definition, is mainly the addition of some sort of starch,
02:24a pure starch, like corn starch or potato starch, and a little bit of baking soda.
02:30The corn starch forms a matrix of sorts.
02:34It gets into the meat and it binds with all the water in the meat, and that way when you
02:38cook it,
02:38the starch helps it hold on to moisture and it gives it that slippery texture.
02:42The baking soda, it raises the pH.
02:44Slightly basic things tenderize proteins very quickly.
02:47So that's why you have this very tender bite.
02:49You can add seasonings here.
02:50You can add soy sauce, wine, sesame oil, garlic, ginger.
02:54I choose not to at this phase because I think they have a tendency to burn on the first fry.
02:59So I build all the flavor into the sauce.
03:01So all I'm going to use here is salt, egg whites, oil, corn starch, and baking soda.
03:07We're going to use baking soda, not baking powder, because we don't want any leavening.
03:10So you just need a little bit.
03:11Really don't need to measure it, just eyeball like a, let's say a dash.
03:16You can do too much.
03:17It will make the meat very mushy and you're going to taste it.
03:20It's going to taste like baking soda.
03:23I'm going to add some eggs.
03:25I'm going to just add egg whites.
03:32Egg whites also are part of the velveting process.
03:36The egg white adds a little bit of protein to help the starches cling to.
03:43And egg whites are very, ever so slightly basic and they add moisture, which is going to improve the viscosity
03:48of the batter as well.
03:50I'm going to add a little bit of oil.
03:51You can add any sort of neutral oil, just not extra virgin olive oil.
03:54So we're going to mix this all together.
03:56It's going to feel kind of slippery, slimy, but that's what you want.
03:59It should be kind of lightly coating everything with like a thin kind of milky layer, if you will.
04:05It doesn't need to marinate for long.
04:06Again, we're not marinating for flavor at this stage.
04:08We're marinating for texture and it happens pretty quickly.
04:12In a perfect universe, you do like six to 10 hours, but you will notice an improvement to the texture
04:18of your meat within 10 to 15 minutes.
04:20And then adding a little bit of oil is going to help prevent these from sticking to one another when
04:26you fry them.
04:26And then that's really it.
04:28You know, does that look right to me?
04:30That looks right to me.
04:34So we're going to make our General Tso's sauce.
04:37The important thing here is balancing the sweetness.
04:40My mother's recipe in her restaurant is like 50 ingredients.
04:45We don't need to get that crazy.
04:46These things are already pretty balanced on the savory, salty, sweet scale.
04:52So that way we don't have to get too crazy with all sorts of measurements.
04:55You know for the most part that these things taste good on their own.
04:58We can just put them together.
04:59These are all things that might already exist in your pantry and we make a great sauce from there.
05:02So we are going to start with ketchup.
05:05Give it that nice red color.
05:07I've always loved ketchup.
05:08I think it's perfectly balanced between all the flavors.
05:10So this is going to be a big part of the sauce.
05:16A1 sauce.
05:17I just like it.
05:18It is actually in my mom's recipe.
05:20You can use Worcester sauce also, but this already has all the good flavors.
05:24Savory, sweet, has some viscosity.
05:27Hoisin sauce.
05:28Most Hoisin sauce these days is a lot of sugar.
05:31Number one ingredient.
05:32Sugar.
05:33It's sweet.
05:34It's savory.
05:34It has viscosity.
05:35And it's going to be tasty.
05:37We're just going to use what most people have in their home.
05:39Kikoman is a really nice all purpose soy sauce.
05:41It's going to add a lot of the salt and the savoriness.
05:44And I give it a little whisk.
05:46See how viscosity wise we're doing.
05:48Obviously we're going to adjust the viscosity here later.
05:50When we add it to the pan with our cornstarch.
05:53This is rice vinegar.
05:54That's going to add the tang.
05:56Also helps to balance all the sweetness.
05:58Yeah, you can pretty much use anything.
05:59I just wouldn't use any vinegar that's like too dark.
06:01Because you already have a lot of dark things in here.
06:03And a lot of Chinese takeout restaurants.
06:05They'll put red food coloring to give it that like striking red color.
06:08We don't have to go for that, but you don't want it too brown.
06:11You want it.
06:11Definitely a distinct redness to it.
06:13We eat with our eyes folks.
06:15You know, it's important.
06:16We're going to add a little bit of wine.
06:18This is Shaoxing wine.
06:20This is like your standard store-bought version that has salt in it to prevent chefs from drinking
06:24it on duty.
06:25This is a very strong aromatic.
06:28It's kind of an unmistakable aroma, but you can't use too much of it.
06:32You just really want to splash.
06:34Alcohol wafts a lot of aromas towards your face, towards your nose when you eat.
06:37So you just need a little bit to carry the extra flavors.
06:40All right.
06:41Is it time for the MSG soapbox?
06:43MSG, it's perfectly fine for you.
06:45Billions of people eat it every single day, including yourself.
06:47Whether you realize it or not, do not fear-monger.
06:49Do not get in the comments here and tell me how this is bad for you because it's not.
06:53There's no scientific research that says that.
06:55We don't need a ton, but adding a little bit, it's going to give you that authentic
06:59Chinese restaurant flavor, my friends.
07:01It's really important and it's perfectly fine for you.
07:04And then sugar.
07:05So like we said, there's a lot of sweet things in here already.
07:07Let's see where we're at.
07:13Pretty umami salt forward.
07:14So we definitely do need a lot of sugar.
07:16It's going to look like a lot.
07:17But again, we're using very little sauce.
07:22We're going to add some ginger and garlic at this phase.
07:24We're also going to add it into the stir fry when we build the sauce.
07:28It doesn't need to be a ton.
07:29You just kind of want it to be there.
07:30Ginger can be very dominant.
07:32You don't want to get too crazy with it.
07:33We're just going to peel it up a little bit.
07:36And nice things about cleaver is you just smash stuff and then, you know, stuff's ready
07:40to go.
07:41And then you just chop it up.
07:42You pick it up so nicely.
07:48See, these things are so useful.
07:50Can't do that with a regular knife.
07:51You could.
07:52It doesn't look as cool enough.
07:57While I'm here, I'm going to prep everything for the final stage because once we begin cooking,
08:03everything happens really quickly.
08:04This is broccoli.
08:05It adds a really nice color.
08:07We're just going to steam it simply, put it on a ring around our chicken.
08:11So, you know, you're eating some vegetables too.
08:13We just want florets.
08:14You want them to be relatively even.
08:17You don't want them too big, obviously.
08:18You want these to cook fairly quickly.
08:19And then we're just going to blast them in salted water.
08:21So I'm going to slice some scallions, finely minced ginger and garlic.
08:25Those are going to go into the pan while we're building our final sauce.
08:29First things, chilies.
08:33I just keep chilies in my pocket, apparently.
08:35All right.
08:35So we're just going to cut these chilies into little bite-sized pieces.
08:42They're really just to add aroma and flavor and warmth to the oil.
08:49You're not really supposed to eat them, but you can.
08:51You can add the seeds if you want.
08:53You can leave them out.
08:54I'm just going to add a few of them.
08:56We're not going to get too crazy here.
08:57All the capsaicin, all the heat in chilies are in the seeds.
09:00I mean, there's some in the chili itself, but if you remove the seeds,
09:03you're removing probably like 70% of the heat.
09:05Scallions.
09:06There's the dark greens, the light greens and the whites.
09:12We're going to use the whites and some of the light greens to flavor our oil.
09:17And while we're building our sauce, and then we're going to use the dark greens for garnish.
09:20The white light green parts of the scallion have a lot more allium in them,
09:25makes them a little bit more pungent and spicy.
09:27You don't need to super thinly slice these because you don't want these to disintegrate.
09:31You want these to be in the sauce, but give up some of their oil.
09:35So that's like a good size for me for when I'm cooking them.
09:38And then this stuff you can slice a little thinner because this is going to be for garnish.
09:43We're going to do garlic and ginger again.
09:44We're going to be a little more intentional about mincing this very finely because it's going to be built into
09:49our sauce.
09:49We were more just flavoring before using Aromats.
09:52So you can use a microplane.
09:53You can use your cleaver.
09:55Just kind of smash these up here.
09:57Same thing with the ginger.
09:58Ginger, obviously very powerful, very distinct flavor.
10:01You just want it to kind of perfume the oil as you build the sauce.
10:07You really don't need a lot.
10:10Smashy, smashy.
10:11Hulk smash.
10:12It's so fast, you know.
10:15All right.
10:16We're just going to finely mince this.
10:18I would say about a ratio of like two to one garlic to ginger.
10:22Look how handy the cleaver is.
10:27Veggies are prepped.
10:28These are all the things we need to build our sauce in the pan.
10:31I'm just going to put it all together.
10:36All right.
10:36So it's a little unorthodox, but I'm actually going to dredge this chicken.
10:40It's not normally how you would do it in a Chinese restaurant, but it's much more dependable and consistent this
10:44way, especially when you're using home equipment.
10:46So I just built a little bit of dredge here, flour and cornstarch, and we're going to go wet marinated,
10:53inch dry, shake off, then fry.
10:55We're just going to add a few pieces at a time here.
10:58Very lightly dredged.
10:59It's really important to shake off all the excess.
11:00You want this to be a very light, delicate dredge as much as possible.
11:04Okay.
11:04Now we're ready to go to the fryer.
11:05This is going to be a double fry.
11:07So there's going to be two different temperatures.
11:09The first fry, the objective is get the crust set and the protein cooked.
11:14Then we're going to let it rest.
11:15The second fry is going to be a higher temp.
11:17Gets really crispy, real hot, real quick.
11:20And then we build the sauce.
11:21Everything comes together very quickly.
11:23So this first fry, do it between like 325 and 350.
11:26So we're going to start a little higher than that because home ranges drop temp a little more intensely than
11:32commercial fryers, as you could imagine.
11:35So I'm frying canola oil.
11:36Any sort of neutral high smoke point oil is great.
11:39I'm going to move these around just so they're not sticking to one another.
11:43All right.
11:43So the first fryer, we're looking to fry about like five to seven minutes.
11:47You want the crust to be set.
11:48You want the chicken to be cooked through, obviously.
11:50The cornstarch and the velveting is going to help it retain some moisture.
11:54Once they start floating, that's a pretty good sign that they're pretty close to being cooked.
12:00And then we're going to drain these.
12:04I'm going to put these on a wire rack so that they don't get a soggy.
12:08Otherwise, they sit in their own moisture.
12:10They're going to steam and you're going to ruin all that crust you worked so hard for.
12:14So after the first fry, crust is set.
12:17It's fully cooked.
12:18You could eat it now, but we're not going to.
12:20We're going to do our second fry.
12:22The only goal we have here is to make this chicken super crispy, deliciously hot.
12:28So this oil is hotter than it was before.
12:30It's about 400F.
12:31I'm just going to keep the spider in so it doesn't get the sediment from the bottom.
12:35All right.
12:36You really only needed like a few seconds there.
12:38Very quick.
12:40Oh, yeah.
12:41Nice and hot.
12:42We're cooking broccoli.
12:43I'm going to season the water with a bit of salt, but we just got some boiling water here.
12:47We're going to blanch these for just a few minutes, arrange them nicely on a plate, and it's going to
12:51visually be very striking next to our general toast chicken.
12:55So I'm going to do salt.
12:58Nice, heavy dosage.
13:00I have broccoli florets here, roughly uniform in shape.
13:03You don't have to get too precious with it.
13:04I'm making sure there's not too much stem.
13:06That way these will cook pretty quickly.
13:08Maybe just two minutes in boiling salted water.
13:10All right.
13:15So we're looking for super bright green, beautiful color.
13:18That way when the chicken, which has like, you know, a slight redness to it, they're going to look really
13:23awesome together.
13:24And, you know, like you see in the Chinese restaurant on the menu, when they have pictures, you want to
13:29eat that.
13:30Blanch the broccoli really quickly.
13:32So these are going to be good here.
13:33We're going to serve them with some rice and our really awesome general toast chicken.
13:38Hot and crispy chicken on the second fry.
13:41Got the broccoli.
13:42We're going to build the sauce.
13:43Sauce time.
13:48We're going to use a saute pan, just like you'd find in your home.
13:51You can use a nonstick.
13:53You can do whatever you want.
13:54You don't need a wok to do this.
13:56You don't need giant fireballs and volcanic heat either.
13:59Obviously, that's how they do it in a restaurant, but you can have great Chinese food on medium heat.
14:05It's going to be just fine, y'all.
14:07Got all my ingredients ready.
14:08It's going to come together pretty quickly.
14:09I'm going to bring in some oil, bloom my aromatics in a little bit of heat.
14:13Got my sauce.
14:14I have cornstarch slurry here.
14:16I'm going to adjust the viscosity of my sauce.
14:18We're going to get some neutral oil here.
14:20A little bit of ginger garlic.
14:26Do some chilies.
14:31You're not trying to get any color.
14:33You're just blooming them up.
14:34And then we're going some scallion whites.
14:38All right.
14:38I'm going to turn this burner on high.
14:41Just smells good.
14:42There's no color whatsoever.
14:43And then I'm going to go with the sauce.
14:48You don't need a lot.
14:52All right.
14:53I'm going to stir the sauce in.
14:54Now, we used ketchup, A1, all those things have modified starches in them.
15:00So sometimes you don't even need the cornstarch, but maybe we'll just do a little bit.
15:04You don't want it to be too gloopy.
15:06You can see it's still kind of running.
15:08It's flowing.
15:11Take that off the heat for a second.
15:12And we're going with our chicken.
15:17So we're going to toss.
15:19As you can see, we don't have too much sauce here.
15:21You want to toss it to coat.
15:24If you need a little bit more, you can add more.
15:28Maybe a little bit.
15:30You just want that nice, like, orange, red, vibrant color.
15:34And you just want enough sauce to coat.
15:37As you can see, not a lot of excess sauce in the pan.
15:39All the aromatics are nicely clinging, too.
15:41Hot, crispy, sauced.
15:44Let's go plate, my friends.
15:48We're going to do this real Chinese restaurant lunch special style.
15:52We're going to get some steamed broccoli, steamed white rice,
15:55and our General Toast chicken on the plate.
15:58$14.95 with a Diet Coke and an egg roll, maybe?
16:00I don't know.
16:01I don't know what the going rate is these days.
16:03So the broccoli, at least at our family restaurant,
16:06just needs to form a beautiful semicircle,
16:09as if cupping the dishes to be.
16:11Mound O' rice.
16:13And we've got to go chicken.
16:18I guess some of the aromatics in there.
16:21Some chilies.
16:23Some scallion.
16:27This looks great.
16:28Nice and crispy.
16:29Nice and saucy.
16:30Nice and shiny.
16:31Beautiful color.
16:33Steamed broccoli.
16:34Arranged ever so artfully.
16:35I want to eat that.
16:41Mm-hmm.
16:42It's like a little warm heat, but nothing crazy.
16:46You can taste the sweetness, but it's still balanced and savory.
16:50Eat a little white rice.
16:53Essential to balancing out the intense flavors.
16:56And broccoli.
17:00Tastes just like home.
17:01So as you see, very easy to do at home.
17:03I know Chinese cuisine can seem a little intimidating
17:05because you think you need the big fire-breathing wok
17:08and the special equipment and yada yada.
17:09You don't.
17:10These are all very pedestrian ingredients that probably exist
17:12in your home already in some form or another.
17:15And if you don't have it, it's not a huge deal.
17:16You can leave a couple things out.
17:17The key is just learning how to do it, eating it fresh,
17:20knowing how to sauce and build flavor.
17:22That's really the key to making great Chinese food at home.
17:26Yeah, here we go.
17:27General Tso's Chicken, y'all.
17:28The key is good.
17:31The biggest forgiveness our information from us,
17:31That's good.
17:32You may 24 years old.
17:32And maybe a simple business and a big boss about them.
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