General Tso's chicken

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General Tso's Chicken
Flickr preppybyday 4665999863--General Tso's Chicken.jpg
General Tso's chicken
Origin
Alternative name(s) Zuo Zongtang, General Tao Chicken
Place of origin Taiwan
Region or state Hunan
Creator(s) Peng Chang-kuei
Details
Course served Main
Serving temperature Hot
Main ingredient(s) Chicken, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar
Shaoxing wine or sherry, sugar, sesame oil, scallions, hot chili peppers, batter
Variations Orange chicken (Westernized version)
General Tso's chicken
Traditional Chinese 左宗棠雞
Simplified Chinese 左宗棠鸡
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 左公雞
Simplified Chinese 左公鸡

General Tso's chicken is a sweet, slightly spicy, deep-fried chicken dish that is popularly served in most Chinese and Asian themed American restaurants. The American Chinese dish is most commonly regarded to have been derived from Hunan cuisine.[1]

The dish is named after General Tso Tsung-tang, or Zuo Zongtang, a Qing dynasty general and statesman, although there is no recorded connection to him.

Name and origins

The food has been associated with the name of Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠, 1812–1885), a Qing Dynasty general from Hunan. Zuo himself could not have eaten the dish as it is today,[2] and the dish is found neither in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, nor in Xiangyin, the home of General Tso. Moreover, descendants of General Tso still living in Xiangyin, when interviewed, say that they have never heard of such a dish.[3]

There are several stories concerning the origin of the dish. Eileen Yin-Fei Lo states in her book The Chinese Kitchen that the dish originates from a simple Hunan chicken dish, and that the reference to "Zongtang" was not a reference to Zuo Zongtang's given name, but rather a reference to the homonym "zongtang", meaning "ancestral meeting hall".[4] Consistent with this interpretation, the dish name is sometimes (but considerably less commonly) found in Chinese as "Zuo ancestral hall chicken". (Chung tong gai is a transliteration of "ancestral meeting hall chicken" from Cantonese; Zuǒ Zōngtáng jī is the standard name of General Tso's chicken as transliterated from Mandarin.)

The dish or its variants are known by a number of names, including Governor Tso's chicken, General Gau's chicken, General Tao's chicken, General Tsao's chicken, General Tong's chicken, General Tang's chicken, General Cho's chicken, General Chau's chicken, General Joe's Chicken, T.S.O. Chicken, General Ching's chicken, House Chicken, or simply General's Chicken. The linguist Victor Mair, commenting on the various names for the dish and problem of getting them straight, says that he has not seen the spelling "General Zuo's Chicken", that is, using the now standard pinyin romanization, but that he expects to see it soon.[5]

Peng claim

As documented by Fuchsia Dunlop in the New York Times,[1] one claim is that the recipe was invented by Taiwan-based Hunan cuisine chef Peng Chang-kuei[6] (a.k.a. Peng Jia) (Chinese: 彭長貴; pinyin: Péng Chánggùi), who had been an apprentice of Cao Jingchen's, a famous early 20th-century Chinese chef. Peng was the Nationalist government banquets' chef and fled with Chiang Kai-shek's forces to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War.[6] There, he continued his career as official chef until 1973, when he moved to New York to open a restaurant. That was where Peng Jia started inventing new dishes and modifying traditional ones; one new dish, General Tso's chicken, was originally prepared without sugar, and subsequently altered to suit the tastes of "non-Hunanese people". The popularity of the dish has now led to it being "adopted" by local Hunanese chefs and food writers, perhaps as an acknowledgment of the dish's unique status, upon which the international reputation of Hunanese cuisine was largely based.[1][3] Ironically, when Peng Jia opened a restaurant in Hunan in the 1990s introducing General Tso's chicken, the restaurant closed without success and the locals found the dish too sweet.[3]

Peng's Restaurant on East 44th Street in New York City claims that it was the first restaurant in the city to serve General Tso's chicken. Since the dish (and cuisine) was new, Chef Peng Jia made it the house specialty in spite of the dish's commonplace ingredients.[1] A review of Peng’s in 1977 mentions that their “General Tso's chicken was a stir-fried masterpiece, sizzling hot both in flavor and temperature”.[7]

Wang claim

New York's Shun Lee Palaces, East (155 E. 55th St.) and West (43 W. 65th St.) also says that it was the first restaurant to serve General Tso's chicken and that it was invented by a Chinese immigrant chef named T. T. Wang in 1972. Michael Tong, owner of New York's Shun Lee Palaces, says, "We opened the first Hunanese restaurant in the whole country, and the four dishes we offered you will see on the menu of practically every Hunanese restaurant in America today. They all copied from us."[2]

It has also been argued that the two stories can be somewhat reconciled in that the current General Tso's chicken recipe—where the meat is crispy fried—was introduced by Chef Wang, but as "General Ching's chicken", a name which still has trace appearances on menus on the Internet (the identity of its namesake "General Ching" is, however, unclear); whereas the name "General Tso's chicken" traces to Chef Peng, who cooked it in a different way.[3]

Recipes

General Tso's chicken
Close-up view of General Tso's chicken

Traditional basic ingredients include:

  • Sauce: soy sauce, rice wine, rice wine vinegar, sugar,[8] cornstarch, dried red chili peppers (whole), garlic.
  • Batter/breading: egg, cornstarch.
  • Dish: Broccoli, chicken (cubed).

Regional differences

The name used for the dish varies. At the United States Naval Academy, the dish is served in the main mess hall, King Hall, as "Admiral Tso's Chicken", reflecting a nautical theme.[3]

Outside North America, one notable establishment that serves General Tso's chicken is the Taiwanese restaurant Peng Chang-kuei, which is credited by some sources as the inventor of the dish.[6] Differences between this "original" dish and that commonly encountered in North America are that it is not sweet in flavor, the chicken is cooked with its skin, and soy sauce plays a much more prominent role.[3]

Nutrition

A typical restaurant serving of General Tso's chicken may include up to 1,300 calories, 11 grams of saturated fat and 3,200 milligrams of sodium [9] as well as exceed 300 mg of cholesterol.[10] This one dish may exceed a person's entire daily recommended sodium intake, half of the recommended caloric intake and 1/3 to 1/2 of the recommended saturated fat limit. One serving will typically be about 4 oz. (approximately 100 grams) of chicken thigh meat which contains 20-30 grams of protein,[11] greater than 30% of the daily recommended niacin needs and over 15% of the recommended B6, phosphorus and zinc needs.[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Text available at WiredNewYork.com
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Victor Mair, "General Tso's chiken," Language Log June 11, 2013
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "The Curious History of General Tso's Chicken", Salon
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ "Chinese Food: A Wok On The Wild Side", Center for Science in the Public Interest
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Nutritional Information For General Tso's Chicken", Lance Armstrong Foundation
  11. ↑ "Grams of Protein in Chicken - Chicken Thighs", High Protein Foods

Further reading

External links

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