I picked up some Sky Valley General Tso's Sauce at Walmart a few weeks ago. I tried it that night and wasn't too impressed. It had the heat, but it didn't have the sweetness I remember from the restaurant/take-out version of General Tso's chicken. Experimentation was in order! :)
I didn't really have time to spend on this, so I went for shortcuts today. I should have fried up some chicken pieces, but I didn't want to take the time, make the mess, so I reached for a (not too bad) shortcut. In the freezer I had a bag of Popcorn Chicken (also Walmart), so I used 8 or those. I also used some dried egg noodles...not Chinese, but still egg noodles, so sort of the same. While the noodles were cooking (10 minutes on the stovetop), I poured a couple of tablespoons of the bottled sauce in a small bowl, a couple of teaspoons of honey, a couple teaspoons of water and some garlic powder and mixed really well. I microwaved the popcorn chicken pieces for a minute and set them aside. In a small iron skillet I heated a teaspoon of oil until it was very hot.
Now with the chicken at hand I poured the sauce into the skillet. It immediately started bubbling. I let it cook for about 30 seconds, and it was thickening fast, then turned off the heat. I immediately dumped in the chicken and stirred it around to cover completely and removed the chicken from the skillet to thicken and cool a little. While it was starting to cool I liberally sprinkled sesame seeds all over the chicken pieces.
About this time the noodles were ready, so I drained and rinsed them in a colander. I put a tablespoon, or so, of the noodle water into the skillet and mixed with the sauce still remaining there just to loosen it up.
I plated noodles with the sticky chicken pieces atop them. I topped the whole dish with some chopped green onion. Then I poured a little of the loosed sauce from the skillet over the chicken and noodles.
The sauce was much, much, more like I remembered. The honey did the trick! The frozen popcorn chicken wasn't bad, not crispy, but it did soak up the sauce nicely and had a good taste. The noodles were still warm and damp so they soaked up some of the sauce as well.
Mom, who's not a spicy food's fan, ate all the chicken and about half the noodles I gave her. I cleaned my plate! :)
Turned out to be a very good, and very easy, General Tso's chicken!
As an aside, I bet chopped up left-over chicken fingers (Zaxby's, KFC, Popeyes, etc) would be even better. Our only problem is when we get chicken fingers they all get eaten so generally there are no left-overs. :)
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