What is General TOS chicken?

Question

is it like barbecue? or sweet and sour?

Answer 1

General Taos Chicken is a real favorite of ours, it has a sweet  and sour taste that is very satisfying.

Answer 2

General Tso's chicken, as soxrcat noted, is pieces of chicken (white or dark, depending on the restaurant), battered and fried and then coated with a sweet and sour (and sometimes spicy) sauce. General Tso's chicken can typically be ordered at varying degrees of spicy, depending on your particular taste.

As for background information on General Tso's and who he was...

General Tso Tsungtang, or as his name is spelled in modern Pinyin, Zuo Zongtang, was born on Nov. 10, 1812, and died on Sept. 5, 1885. He was a frighteningly gifted military leader during the waning of the Qing dynasty, a figure perhaps the Chinese equivalent of the American Civil War commander William Tecumseh Sherman. He served with brilliant distinction during China's greatest civil war, the 14-year-long Taiping Rebellion, which claimed millions of lives.

Tso was utterly ruthless. He smashed the Taiping rebels in four provinces, put down an unrelated revolt called the Nian Rebellion, then marched west and reconquered Chinese Turkestan from Muslim rebels.

Tso emerges from several sources as a self-made man, born in Hunan province, a hilly hot-tempered heartland, whose cuisine rivals that of Sichuan for sheer firepower. (While Sichuan food is hot right up front, in the mouth, in your face; Hunanese cuisine tends to build up inside you, like a slow charcoal fire, until you feel as though your belly is filled with burning coals.)

As a young man Tso flunked the official court exams three times, a terrible disgrace. He returned home, married and devoted himself to practical studies, like agriculture and geography. He took up silkworm farming and tea farming and chose a gentle sobriquet, calling himself "The Husbandman of the River Hsiang." Like Sherman, stuck teaching at a military academy in Louisiana on the eve of the Civil War, he seemed washed up.

He was 38 when the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850. For the rest of his life, Tso would wield the sword, becoming one of the most remarkably successful military commanders in Chinese history.

The details of Tso's life are easy to document. But how the chicken got named for him is another matter. In "Chinese Kitchen" (Morrow, 1999), author Eileen Yin-Fei Lo says that dish is a Hunan classic called "chung ton gai," or "ancestor meeting place chicken."

But to others, General Tso's chicken recipe may be no more ancient than 1972, and may have more in common with Manhattan than with mainland China. On "The Definitive General Tso's Chicken Page" (www.echonyc.com/~erich/tso.htm) New Yorker Eric Hochman theorizes "It was invented in the mid-1970s, in NYC, by one Chef Peng.

"Around 1974, Hunan and Szechuan food were introduced to the city, and General Tso's Chicken was an exemplar of the new style. Peng's, on East 44th Street, was the first restaurant in NYC to serve it, and since the dish (and cuisine) were new, Chef Peng was able to make it a House Specialty, in spite of its commonplace ingredients."

My own research led me to the same city, but a different Manhattan restaurateur, who claims the dish is the brilliant invention of his former partner, a gifted Chinese immigrant chef named T.T. Wang.

"He went into business with me in 1972," said Michael Tong, owner of New York's Shun Lee Palaces, East (155 E. 55th St.) and West (43 W. 65th St.). "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.

Answer 3

General Tso's chicken is made from chicken breast meat bite sized pieces, battered and fried. It is then covered in a very spicy and sweet sauce, sometimes mixed with some onions, vegetables, and garlic. It is usually served over rice or noodles.

Answer 4

It is like a sweet and sour with just a little kick to it. Very good. Not overly spicy, but yet not too sweet like sweet and sour. Try it. I bet you will like it.

Answer 5

It's General Tso's chicken.  It's a really good Chinese dish that consists of chicken pieces served in a kind of sweet and spicy glaze.  It's usually served with rice.  I think it's excellent !

Answer 6

It's in between both! It's kinda spicy.