This past week I made the Sesame Chicken recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

Like California-style orange chicken, this is the same frying as General Tso’s with a different sauce.

The sauce for Sesame Chicken is almost the same as General Tso’s, except more dark soy sauce, more sugar, more sesame oil, no chiles, and add toasted sesame seeds.

Minced garlic and ginger are sauteed in oil until fragrant, and then light and dark soy sauces, cornstarch, Shaoxing wine, distilled vinegar, chicken stock, sugar, and sesame oil are stirred in. This is cooked until it’s reduced and thickened, and then the sesame seeds are stirred in.

I made a batch and a half of the dry coating and the sauce, as the previous recipes seemed like maybe they could use it. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to make a difference. The chicken pieces used up every available bit of the dry coating and didn’t seem to be any crispier, and it was still some work to get all of the chicken pieces coated in the sauce.

I didn’t care for the increased dark soy sauce. I don’t know if it’s the brand I have or if I’m just sensitive to the flavor, but it seems that every recipe that used it in any significant quantity has been overwhelmed by it.

The sesame chicken came out much darker than I expected and with much more of a pronounced dark soy sauce molasses note.

Of course it was still good. How can fried chicken in a sweet sauce not be good? But I would go back to the 2:1 light:dark soy sauce ratio as General Tso’s.

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