General Tao’s Chicken

General Tao’s chicken is a sweet, slightly spicy, deep-fried battered chicken dish that is popularly served in most Chinese and AsianThemed western restaurants.

The American Chinese dish is most commonly regarded to have been derived from Hunan cuisine. The dish is named after General Zuo Zongtang, a Qing dynasty general and statesman. The food has been associated with the name of Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885), a Qing Dynasty general from Hunan. There are also several stories concerning the origin of the dish.

General Tao’s Chicken commonly served with rice, but sometime with noodle is also popular in modern cuisine. This dish has sour, sweet, spicy taste. It becomes a staple of Chinese western dish in many oversea countries. Instead of using battered chicken, using fish, vegetables, pork, lamb and other protein can be made battered meat base. Based on different battered proteins, chefs make different tasted sauces to match them. In traditional Chinese dish, chefs like to use pork instead of chicken. Thus, it is also called “Tang Cu Li Ji” and translated as “battered pork tenderloin in sweet sour sauce”.