Recreating a General Tso’s Chicken Recipe From Taste

Hi, it's Hana, and I'm here in the BA test kitchen

to have a secret conversation about Chris Morrocco.

Once again,

we are going to put Chris's super-taster abilities

to the test.

This is General Tso's chicken from the Woks of Life.

We are challenging Chris to replicate this exact dish

with every ingredient.

He'll be able to taste it, touch it, and smell it,

but at no point will he be able to see this dish.

At the end of the day, we'll come back

and taste his final creation and I'll be the judge.

[suspenseful music]

Oh, interesting. Blast of soy sauce or oyster sauce.

Real talk, it's hard to describe soy

without using the word soy.

There's something very savory, a tiny bit funky,

the flavor is like salty but with a sense of umami.

Let's see what we got here.

Oh god, that's good. I frigging love that.

[Chris groans]

[Kev] What's so good?

I'm glad you asked, Kev.

What we have here is a piece of chicken

marinated in some way, coated in a starchy shell, fried,

and then tossed in a sort of sweet, spicy, soy glaze.

Can imagine there's like a little bit of like,

maybe like a Shaoxing Wine, there could be some ginger.

It's not wildly hot, it's not crazy sweet.

Everything's in a nice kind of tension and balance.

And I'm curious if there's anything else here,

like what's that, you know?

Probably some broccoli. Hmm.

So very often in this type of stir fried preparation,

the broccoli is gonna be very briefly blanched

for getting stir fried, to temper the toughness

and also makes it very like vibrant and bright green.

Huh? Oh, so I've got some kind of dried, red, spicy chili.

The long, red, spicy, dried chilies that you get from,

you know, Asian markets.

I'm not getting discernible pieces of ginger or garlic.

I feel like those flavors are there,

or is it like a softer brightness

coming from a cooking wine?

To me, like I feel like this has gotta be

some kind of version of like a General Tso's chicken.

This is one of those recipes

where I think my ingredient list

is gonna be frighteningly short.

Oh, itchy.

[Dan] I've seen that this now comes in in a flying way.

Is that like the new thing?

No, that's not the new thing.

No, no, no, it doesn't. Don't even have the glasses on, man.

Okay, whew, so I'm making a list of groceries to be shopped.

Boneless, skinless chicken breast,

quite a bit of corn starch, veg oil.

Now I have to spell Shaoxing on camera.

Shao, is there an X in there?

Shaoxing, I had one letter wrong.

[Dan] What do you have?

I had S-H-A-O-X-I-A-N-G,

when in fact it is S-H-A-O-X-I-N-G.

Come on. Let's get some garlic, ginger, broccoli.

If there are other soys out there, wherever you're going,

get 'em all and let's taste 'em all.

Let's get rice vinegar just in case.

Maybe toasted sesame oil. If it's there, it's very soft.

I feel pretty good about this as a starting point.

Somebody's gonna run out and grab these ingredients

and then I will have my first attempt at making the dish.

[suspenseful music]

Why did I think that Shaoxing Cooking Wine

was white or clear?

So I'm starting with soy because I'm just fascinated

by the number of things that came up here.

All labeled soy, standard Kikkoman, which does have wheat.

This one, which has all kinds of added ingredients,

including caramel.

Then the seasoning sauce, I've never even heard of this.

Fascinating. And then we have a double black soy sauce.

[Chris gasps]

Oh. Has like this kind of molassessy quality to it.

Fascinating.

Anywho, I wanna start out just by using

the most kind of standard soy sauce possible.

I'm gonna make the final kind of like sauce element

that's gonna go on the chicken

when it comes out of the fryer.

I'm doing standard Kikkoman soy sauce.

I'm doing Shaoxing Wine,

an ingredient that I'm not crazy familiar with.

I'm wondering to what degree it might go

in the finishing sauce element

but also in the chicken pretreatment, or both, or none.

Then we need some sugar here and to see where that nets me

in terms of a sweet, salt balance.

That's not bad in terms of flavor balance.

I do wonder if there's a little bit of toasted sesame oil

operating in the background there.

Toasted sesame, especially used towards the end

of the cooking process as a finishing element,

is an incredibly powerful aromatic ingredient.

Adding it at the beginning of a recipe

tends to really temper its aroma.

Starch is going to be what binds the sauce

as it reduces down and creates that kind of silkiness.

Now I wanna keep some of these ingredients out

because I do wonder if they're maybe doing double duty

as part of our pretreatment of the chicken.

I don't need a ton of soy sauce in here.

Oh, let's just start with, again, like equal parts,

just to establish a baseline here.

I'm banking on the notion that there is garlic and ginger

in the dish, but perhaps it's simply been grated

or treated in such a way

that you're not getting discernible pieces of it.

Let's put a baseline amount of starch in.

The starch in this part of the dish

is gonna be what effectively forms the crust on the chicken

when it goes into the oil.

So I want it to be a little bit thicker than that.

I want something that's really gonna cling to that chicken.

I feel like we could probably even go a bit tighter still,

like it can be quite a tight mixture.

So that's quite a bit thicker.

That should adhere pretty nicely to the chicken,

almost like a batter.

Going with boneless, skinless chicken,

it'll yield the biggest pieces without skin.

That will allow me to cut it

into the most regular-sized pieces possible.

All right, so seasoning chicken with salt

and then getting it into, let's just call it the marinade.

You see how this mixture is very tight?

Tight just means it's really clingy.

Is that like quite enough coating? Like not really, right?

I definitely need more starch.

I need more liquid to bind it. So we're going double.

All right, great.

Maybe this is like too wet now,

but I mean, at least like we're coated

and we've got something.

We're gonna get oil going, vegetable oil,

we need to do a quick steam or blanch on this broccoli,

thinking we do steam.

All right, we're gonna get this hot.

We just wanna do like a very fast steam.

I could blanch it as well, but I thought it'd be more fun

to just root around in the kitchen for a steamer basket

and we wanna really think really hard about any wet element

that's going into that stir fry environment.

[Dan] Uh-oh.

Literally like the steamer basket

disintegrated in my hands.

Didn't want wet broccoli. What did we get?

Wet broccoli. What else is there?

The thing that's going through my mind is just like,

there aren't enough things here.

Confidence is low, this can't be enough.

I feel like I'm missing ingredients.

All right, so I'm gonna start

dropping these pieces of chicken in.

I'm gonna be looking for more of a color change

and texture change to know that this is done,

as opposed to temping it or anything else.

It can almost effectively be overcooked,

but that starchy shell is gonna protect the chicken

from losing too much moisture.

This is like, that's pretty good,

but what if we could make it great?

Flavors are getting a little bit of soy,

little like retronasal soy, seasoning's nice,

pleasantly shreddy but it's still moist.

We could dial that up a little bit.

So we are now stir frying.

A little bit of neutral oil in our wok.

I just wanna toast the chilies

and they are toasting real fast.

[chilies sizzling]

Oh, they're probably gonna get too dark.

Not much of a stir fryer. Sorry you had to see this.

A wok is so nice for this kind of application

'cause it disperses the heat.

A liquid is gonna evaporate really quickly.

It's not gonna sog out.

So chicken's gonna go in and then this is the glaze.

Oh wow. Look at how fast the corn starch activated.

I'm gonna add a touch of water.

I don't want it to be over reduced, but we got something.

Sauce a little over reduced, a little salty.

[Chris sighs]

Little bit of a poor effort there,

but I haven't cooked in a wok in so long,

ended up creating like a slightly,

you know, kinda gummy texture.

We're missing some crunch here. It's kind of a bummer.

For ingredients, I'm gonna give myself a 65.

Something's not right here.

Technique, I would go with more of like a 75.

Appearance, maybe I would go with like an 85 there.

Then taste, I think I'm at maybe a 70.

Okay, actual scores are on this sheet. Wait, what is this?

Effort, attitude, kindness, confidence.

[Dan] Those are my scores. [Chris laughs]

These are Dan's scores.

So far, we've got effort is a 68.

Attitude is a very obvious 63.

Kindness, no surprise here, a 41.

Confidence, strangely high, 73, very much in character.

That brings Dan to a total of 61 for a D minus average.

[Dan] Those are your scores from me.

No, that was your scores from me.

[Dan] No, that's how I'm grading you.

No, no, no. That's how you've been graded.

Actual score, total is 74.

Technique is a bit of a bummer to me. Like a 68.

[Chris sighs]

I don't know that I'm gonna teach myself

how to make General Tso's chicken in like one more pass,

one more chance to taste the original dish

and as ever, there is a lot riding on that.

Stakes are high.

[suspenseful music]

Yeah, not getting oyster sauce. Soy and chicken, so strong.

Anything on the outside of the chicken.

Ooh, I got a piece of garlic.

You could definitely add some more brightness.

I don't know that the Shaoxing Wine

is giving us enough acidity.

Rice vinegar could just punch it up a little bit.

Frankly, could be sweeter. Brown sugar?

Still not getting pieces of ginger.

These pieces of chicken, it's almost like it's like a strip.

It's kind of curled in on itself.

I would love to change to boneless, skinless chicken thigh.

All right, cool. Let's move on.

I'm gonna get my final attempt at the dish

and hopefully get a little closer.

So we're making the marinade

and I'm going all-in on Shaoxing Wine and cornstarch

with a little bit of salt.

It's just a matter of needing to make like a slurry

that's a little bit more neutral,

and then bring all of the soy flavor in

with the glaze at the end.

I want it to be pretty thick. Wow, that is like so thick.

I really don't like that consistency.

It's sort of absorbing the starch,

but it's kind of separating out.

Now we've restored it to, you know,

the kind of fluidity, heavy cream texture.

We're gonna need that additional starch

in order to really build up that outer coating.

Okay, that's where the chicken's going.

So I'm not doing ginger or garlic in the marinade this time.

Moving on to the sauce element, still Kikkoman standard soy,

sugar, less corn starch this time.

I'm including a little bit of rice vinegar and some water.

Rice vinegar is just, you know,

it's essentially a vinegar created

from something akin to sake.

Still going with just a touch of toasted sesame.

Flavor's good, I do wonder if we're like missing

some kind of complexity.

[Chris sighs]

This one is our double black soy sauce.

Maybe I'm just gonna use a skosh of this.

I mean, screw it, right?

Let's see what that did flavor-wise.

A little bit more depth to it. Next, chicken.

Got some boneless, skinless chicken thighs.

In the second tasting, it became apparent

that there was kind of multiple muscle groups.

So we did a little pivot and I'm feeling great about it.

I mean, it looks like holy hell,

but whew, that's some like fun house [beep] right in there.

If anything, it's clinging worse. I don't know.

I either don't know the right technique

or my understanding of the technique is just wrong.

So I'm adding a little bit more starch to this.

See if I can get it incrementally tighter.

It's doing that thing where it's like it's tightened up

to the point where it's kinda weird.

Do I get a lifeline?

[Dan] You can show Hana what you have here.

Do you have a minute to come talk about chicken?

Yeah, what do you want? Just kidding.

Okay, Hana, if it's too fluid,

I don't have a thick enough coating.

Did you ever make oobleck?

No. Gooja?

[Hana laughs]

That's like what this really comes down to.

You know, Bartholomew and the Oobleck?

It's like that stuff you can make

out of like glue and borax and like corn starch.

No. Like '80s slime?

Like a kid's project.

Like '80's slime. Thank you. No.

At least like, okay, well.

Does this just seem like it's headed for disaster?

I've said this before to you many times.

Oh. You know,

I am of a two fry spool. Double fry.

Ah. Uh-huh. Method camp.

I would just put that out there.

Mm-hmm, cool, thanks. [Hana laughs]

You know what?

Sometimes it's not like what your friend says,

it's just the comforting sound of their laughter.

Let's do it, let's stop talking about it

and let's start cooking.

Just gonna cook off broccoli super fast.

All right, broccoli is blanched. The oil is at temp.

We're doing a test piece.

Was the batter thick enough

to have enough clinging to the chicken

to create a real sensation of there being a crust on it?

So in Korean fried chicken, something that you see

is a low temperature fry, followed by a high temperature fry

and that creates the crispiest,

crunchiest possible outer shell.

I've said this before to you. I am of a two fry school.

I would just put that out there.

I don't think that's what we wanna do.

Oh heavens, the oil is a little bit hot.

Don't worry about it.

This place has a fire extinguisher, right?

It's certainly thicker than round one.

I think we have achieved quite a bit more crispiness

on this outer coating.

I think this is gonna stir fry up really nicely.

I wanna be careful like not making it too, too hot here.

Oh, the sliced garlic. Huh, thanks for nothing, Dan.

[Hana] Nothing like adding a little garlic

at the last second.

Oh, stop. This is fine.

This is right when I wanted to add it.

I just really wanna make sure

the broccoli gets a little bit of color,

garlic gets a little toasty.

We have our finishing sauce.

Got a little tight, but it's better. Crunch is better.

I don't know, there's still like a little something lacking

in the flavor, but this is our second and final attempt.

Nice glaziness, nice sauciness, nicely coated.

I think this is an incremental improvement

over my first attempt.

Ingredients, we were at 72, maybe we pulled it up to a 78.

Technique, we're probably maybe still down around like a 70.

Appearance, maybe now we're an 80.

I don't know what changed so dramatically.

And taste, I'd love to think that we're at an 85 now.

Hana's gonna come and try this

and she's gonna be able to stack this up

against the original.

Oh, hello there. Hi.

How's it going?

It's okay. Oh.

Yeah, I mean, it's like fine.

When your voice goes up like that, it makes me-

When I go falsetto, it's like-

Yeah.

Yeah, I can't be good, can it?

Okay, may I present to you? General Tso's chicken.

Yay. Yay.

[Hana] By the Woks of Life.

[Chris] The Woks of Life.

[Hana] What do you think?

I mean, I am struck.

There's certainly something in that texture

ever so slightly more kind of like puffy.

I don't know how to describe it.

I think, first of all Chris, you did a great job.

I mean, they look very similar.

Obviously some differences in appearance.

Your sauce is a bit darker. This one is a bit looser.

And it is actually looser

than what we might be familiar with.

We're gonna take a bite of the original

and then I'll take a bite of mine.

Here, give me a plate.

Do you see anything in their batter

that is not on your chicken?

Sesame seed?

Yeah, I think here you might have consolidated some steps.

They take a two-pronged marinating approach

and they leave it on the chicken pieces to absorb.

And then the second part of that process

is dusting with a few sesame seeds,

corn starch and AP flour.

And so it's almost like a light dredge.

[Chris] Yeah, I basically combined both things.

Talk to me about how you went about

frying your chicken pieces.

I was definitely listening to you

when you said, oh, you know, Like a two-part fry,

low temp, high temp.

I was, but again, like-

When you say listening, does that mean

that you double fried these?

Well. I don't think that's what we wanna do.

What I was thinking you might have meant

was that the time that the chicken then goes into the wok

can almost function as the second fry.

Yeah, no, it needs two fries in the oil

and then it can meet its sauce.

That feels so fussy to me.

I mean, imagine if you're at like a takeout restaurant,

you probably have a lot of this prepped ahead,

at least for the first fry- Sure, blanched.

And then to order, you're doing the second fry.

But I think more than that in terms of an ability

to hold the flavor, that second fry is critical.

Interesting.

So let's talk about the sauce components.

You actually got a lot of them correct.

Regular soy sauce, dark soy sauce,

they actually use brown sugar.

Really? They do? Yeah.

And I heard you might've been reaching for-

Yeah, I was. I don't know.

The dark soy already had a almost molassessy quality to me.

Here they happen to use chicken stock.

I would say your sauce just tastes very concentrated

in a way that could probably have benefited from water,

regardless of what the textural output would've given you.

Great effort. Taking it from the top.

Ingredients, you gave yourself a 78

and I actually gave you an 85.

Technique, however, I gave you a 69.

The velveting technique they used

is just so different from what you did.

Totally. Plus,

the lack of the double fry.

Mm-hmm. Oh, you weren't gonna let me walk away-

And I literally gave that to, I gave that to you, okay?

That was a bonus. Appearance, however, I gave you an 83.

It looks a little different,

but overall looks so appetizing.

And taste, I gave you an 80 because-

Think that's fair.

Yeah, again, it had all the elements,

the salty, the sweet, the spice,

but it just was not in the correct balance.

And then my score for you is a 79.25.

So actually like I ended up giving you the better score.

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Yeah.

Chinese cuisine is especially an area

where I feel like I learned 10 new things

each time I learn about a dish.

Totally. Thanks, Hana. Good job. Yeah.

All right. Thank you.

Oh my god, like next time,

like I don't care what it is, we're double frying it.

It could be a bowl of corn flakes.

You know what? Put in [beep] bag, put it right in the oil.

Twice.

This is a very different presentation of this dish

than what I thought it to be.

I think that's great. You know what I mean?

It's just one dish.

But what that dish means to one chef versus another.

You know, the devil's always in the details.

Mushroom dark soy sauce. Hmm.

Is there like caramel in this. Holy Hana.

Water, corn syrup, hydrolyzed soy protein, caramel color.

[Dan] Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Why can't we talk about soy now?

[Dan] We can, but then we gotta set up

why you gotta start with the soy sauce.

Golden mountain seasoning sauce.

[Dan] This is not usable content. Stop-

Why is it not usable? I wanna start with the soy.

[Dan] Then say, I wanna start with soy.

I feel like you coulda cut that in.

You coulda just let me going and then cut that in.