How To Make General Tso’s Chicken

We make General Tso’s Chicken ourselves in order to get a gluten free version of this classic sweet and spicy Chinese restaurant dish.

This recipe is gluten free using gluten free flour and tamari instead of soy sauce.

Watch A Video

Here is a video of 2 Cooks in the Kitchen making General Tso’s Chicken:

Ingredients for General Tso’s Chicken

• 1 lb Chicken Thighs cut into cubes
• 1 Cup Mirin Rice Cooking Wine
• 1/4 Cup Tamari
• 1 Cup Gluten Free Flour
• 1 Tbls Salt
• Vegetable Oil For Frying
• 1/2 Tbls Water
• 1/2 Tbls Cornstarch
• 1/4 Cup Tamari
• 1/4 Cup Mirin
• 1/4 Cup Rice Vinegar
• 3 Cloves Garlic, minced
• 1 tsp Ginger, grated
• 1/2 Cup Red Chile Pods
• 1/4 Cup Sugar
• 1/4 Cup Sliced Green Onions for garnish

Make the Marinade

We’ll start this simple marinade by combining 1 cup of Mirin and 1/4 cup of Tamari in a medium sized mixing bowl. We are using Tamari instead of soy sauce to make this recipe gluten free. We’ve never found a gluten free version of this dish in a restaurant so we’ve learned to make it ourselves.

Marinate the Chicken

Then we just put our chicken in the marinade, stir it well, cover it and let it marinate in the refrigerator for an hour. You can shorten the time a little if you need to but it should marinate for at least 30 minutes. We cut our chicken into fairly large bite sized pieces for this dish. When it is done marinating we’ll pour it into a strainer and let the excess liquid drain off.

Mix Flour and Salt

Next we mix flour and salt in a medium sized mixing bowl. You can mix dry ingredients together easily with a whisk, they’re not just for wet ingredients! We are using Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free One-To-One flour to make this gluten free. You can use a different brand of gluten free flour, we just have easy access to Bob’s and of course if you don’t need to be gluten free just regular flour is fine.

Coat the Chicken

Once our flour is ready we put the drained chicken in the bowl and stir to coat it thoroughly.

Deep Fry In Oil

We’ll put about 1/2 inch of vegetable oil in a cast iron skillet to cook our chicken in batches. If you have a deep fryer you could just use that and cook it all in one batch. You’ll want to get the oil to 350 degrees before adding the chicken. We’ll stir the pieces in the oil until they turn golden, about 5 minutes. Then we remove the chicken to drain on a paper towel while we fry the next batch.

Make The Sauce

To start the sauce we’ll first make a cornstarch slurry, combining equal parts cornstarch and water and using a small whisk to mix it together.

Tamari, Mirin and Rice Vinegar

We’ll use one measuring cup to combine equal parts of Tamari, Mirin and rice vinegar. We’re using 1/4 cup of each for this.

Cook Garlic and Ginger

We’ll heat a little olive oil in a large skillet. Once the oil is hot we’ll add our garlic and ginger and let that cook for a minute or so.

Red Chiles

We’ll add the whole red chiles to the pan. You can decide how many to add. We leave the chiles whole in this dish and leave it up to the consumer whether they want to break them open to make it extra spicy. We like to use de arbol chiles but you could use red thai chiles or really any kind of chiles or even add some chile flakes as well. It’s nice to have the red color to make the dish prettier.

Add The Sauce and Sugar

Now we will pour in our Tamari, Mirin and rice vinegar mix and then add the sugar. We’ll let that heat up until it is boiling.

Stir In The Cornstarch

Once our sauce is boiling we will stir in our cornstarch slurry. You’ll want to continue to stir this as it thickens so you don’t get lumps.

Add the Chicken

Finally, once our sauce has thickened, we will add our chicken back into the pan. We’ll stir this well to get everything thoroughly coated and cook it long enough to be sure the chicken is warmed through.

Plate With Rice

This dish is usually served with rice and we see no reason to break with tradition at this point. It makes for a beautiful presentation. (You could certainly use cauliflower rice.)

Here are some other chicken recipes you might enjoy:

• Kung Pao Chicken
• Chinese Chicken Salad
• Green Chile Chicken
• Lacquered Chicken

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