I of course use pheasant here, but chicken is the traditional meat for this recipe. If you do use chicken, use thigh meat instead of breast meat; it tastes better. There are a few unusual ingredients in an authentic General Tso's that you will want on hand, notably the black vinegar and the tien tsin chiles. Both are readily available in larger supermarkets or in Asian markets. That said, if you live in an area without large supermarkets or Asians, you can use malt vinegar and any dried chile.
Recipe by Hank Shaw on December 9, 2012
Prep time: PT15M
Cook time: PT10M
Total time: PT25M
Rating
4.84 stars (42 reviews)
Keywords
pheasant, stir-fry
Ingredients
4 tablespoons potato starch or corn starch
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 cups peanut or vegetable oil for frying
1/2 cup pheasant or chicken stock
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar, (or more if you want it sweet)
1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar or malt vinegar
2 tablespoons tomato paste mixed with 2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon potato or corn starch
1 pound pheasant breast meat, (cut into bite-sized pieces)
3 tablespoons peanut oil, (lard or vegetable oil)
8 dried hot chiles, torn ((use less if you don't want it spicy))
A 2-inch piece of ginger, (peeled and minced)
3 garlic cloves, (sliced thin)
6 green onions, (chopped)
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Categories
Main Course
Cuisine
Chinese
Steps
In a small bowl, mix egg yolks, soy and potato starch together with the pheasant pieces. Set aside at room temperature while you chop everything else. Mix the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside.
Pour the peanut oil into a wok or large, heavy pot and heat it to about 350°F. If you don't have a thermometer, you can test by putting a little flour or the end of a wooden chopstick into the oil: If it sizzles immediately, the oil is hot enough. Get a chopstick or something similar ready -- you will need this to quickly separate the pieces of pheasant when they hit the hot oil. Lay out a baking sheet with a paper towel on it for the finished pheasant pieces.
When the oil is ready, add about 1/3 of the pheasant pieces and immediately use the chopstick to separate them. Fry until they are golden brown, about 2-3 minutes. Remove the pheasant from the hot oil with a slotted spoon and set on the baking sheet. Repeat twice more with the remaining pheasant pieces, frying 1/3 at a time. Doing it this way keeps the oil nice and hot.
Turn off the heat and let the oil cool a bit. Pour it into a heatproof container (I use a large Pyrex measuring cup) and deal with it later. Wipe out the inside of the wok if using. If you are not using a wok, get out a large saute pan.
Heat the 3 tablespoons of peanut oil in the wok over high heat for 1 minute. Add the dried chiles and cook until they almost turn black, another minute or two. Add the ginger and stir fry 30 seconds, then add the garlic and stir fry another 30 seconds.
Add all the pheasant pieces and the green onions. Stir the sauce in the bowl and add that, making sure you get all the potato starch, which will have sunk to the bottom. Stir fry 1 minute. Turn off the heat and mix in the sesame oil. Serve at once with steamed rice.
Nutitrion
Serving Size: 1 serving
Calories: 341 kcal
Carbohydrates: 16 g
Protein: 29 g
Fat: 18 g
Saturated Fat: 4 g
Cholesterol: 170 mg
Sodium: 719 mg
Sugar: 5 g
Reviews
Matthew Price on 2024-03-30 (5 stars): Simply fantastic. Easy to follow and delicious.
Hannah Ziemer on 2024-01-14 (5 stars): Made this at 10:30pm when the Asian cuisine craving hit. Simple pantry ingredients, customizable, with big flavor. Will have this perfected by next pheasant season. ??????????
Monica Weller on 2023-10-30 (5 stars): This was delicious. I made a few substitutions only because I wanted to use ingredients that I had on hand. I used rice vinegar for the sauce and olive oil and sesame oil to pan fry (not deep fry). Left out the peppers due to family not liking spicy food, did top mine with red pepper flakes. I will be making again, many times!
Bill on 2022-08-12 (5 stars): Excellent taste and technique
Erik on 2021-11-12 (5 stars): Winner! Just got back from a successful hunt in SD, and after cleaning my birds, I immediately pulled up the site to see what I could find that is different than the usual offerings. I love General Tso's, but as Hank points out, it is usually offered in some kind of gooey, sugar glop, and not like my favorite, savory, hot and spicy style. Not only is this recipe, excellent, it's absolutely perfect with pheasant, where the meat has better flavor and is more tender than chicken. My wife loved it. The only alteration, I did, was to substitute honey for the sugar (I always do this), and I used a "no chicken, chicken stock", in order to make a vegetarian portion for my daughter, which was semi-successful. I can't wait to try the Kung Pao next.
Anthony on 2021-09-08 (5 stars): Used anything from pheasant, chukar to wild turkey with this recipe. Always a repeat request from the wife!
Ruth on 2021-01-22 (5 stars): I love this website. All the recipes I’ve tried have been winners! My husband and I both loved the general’s pheasant. I didn’t have all the ingredients so I made some substitutions: instead of green onions I used thinly sliced white onion and green pepper, instead of dried chiles I used hot sesame oil.
Steven Hodges on 2020-10-27 (5 stars): This is an easy and very falvorful dish. I’ve used pheasant and duck both and they were excellent! This is a “go to” in my house.
Jeff King on 2020-03-29 (4 stars): Great recipe. We added more Thai chiles for heat. Delicious.
Mark Buckley on 2018-04-30 (5 stars): Made last night from a wild turkey breast shot over the weekend. I doubled the recipe because the turkey breast was just over 2 pounds.
I did NOT double the number of dried chilis, as I've learned the hard way that heat is not linear in recipes, lol.
This recipe was delicious. I aimed for 1/2"-3/4" cubes of turkey breast, and they came out of the oil after 2 minutes or so crispy and so tender.
This recipe is in Hank's small game cookbook which is a steal on Amazon for the quality of content in it. Have made the Kung Pao chicken as well and am working my way through it - turkey tamales coming from thighs sometime soon.
Pamela Stephens Karnes on 2018-02-22 (5 stars): I used a young wild sow pig backstrap. It was delicious. I tasted the sauce before I mixed it and I was skeptical because I thought it would be too tomatoey. However, after it mixed with the garlic and chiles and the sesame oil it really balanced out. Will certainly do this again. YUM
Paul Jones on 2018-02-18 (4 stars): My wife made this a few nights ago and it was delicious! Definitely going to be a regular menu item to use up our delicious pheasants.
