Last week I made the General Tso’s Chicken recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

General Tso’s Chicken is the first recipe in the “Crispy-and-Saucy Recipes, the Chinese American Way” section of the “Frying” chapter. Kenji introduces the section with an overview of achieving an extra crispy fried coating that stays crunchy even when sauced. It looks like the next few recipes follow a similar approach, mostly differing in the sauce.

For General Tso’s, chicken thigh chunks are marinated in a mixture of egg white, soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, vodka, baking soda, and cornstarch.

A portion of the egg white, soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and vodka is whisked into a bowl of flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt until “coarse, mealy clumps” form. These clumps are supposed to become crunchy chunks on the fried chicken.

For the sauce, garlic, ginger, scallions, and dried chiles are sauteed in oil until aromatic. Then a mixture of light and dark soy sauces, cornstarch, Shoaxing wine, distilled vinegar, chicken stock, sugar, and toasted sesame oil are added in and cooked until thickened. Larger-cut scallions are mixed in at the end.

The marinated chicken pieces are tossed in the crumbly dry coating. I thought the chicken was still a bit wet after this and added additional flour and cornstarch. But then the clumpy parts stopped sticking.

These coated chicken pieces are then fried. I finally learned from my own experience and did this in two batches. The oil temp successfully stayed at the appropriate temperature. Kenji has an optional second fry for extra crispiness, which I did. I did that in a single batch.

The fried chicken is tossed and folded in the sauce and then served. I found the sauce to be a bit scant for the volume of chicken. I think increasing the sauce volume a touch would be helpful.

The chicken was outstanding. It was, indeed, crunchy, crunchier than I would find at a Chinese American restaurant. Kenji says that it will still be crunch leftover. It was a little crunchy, but, to me, leftover tasted much more like you’d get in Chinese takeout: saucy, kind of soggy, fried chicken. My son loved it.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.