Tso Good

Hi everybody!

When I got back to Toronto from NYC, for some reason I was in the mood for General Tso’s. I really can’t explain my craving. It’d been years since I last had it, and it’s not even particularly my favorite Chinese dish. But that’s how cravings are sometimes. However, I wasn’t about to go to some cheap Chinese restaurant to fulfill my yen—rather, I used my sudden craving as an excuse to try to recreate the dish at home!

As I poked around the internet for a tasty (and vegan) General Tso’s recipe, I was a little bewildered by the great variety of recipes I was finding. As I soon gathered, there seems to be no general formula for General Tso’s, beyond “a sweet-and-spicy sauce”. Some of the recipes I found called for Asian ingredients I’d never heard of, and others just seemed too complicated. Eventually I found an easy, straightforward recipe here—I was excited to try it out as a new vegetable bowl (or, rather, vegetable plate) topping!

In the end, the recipe was even easier to make than I thought it’d be, and quick too. However, I’m not sure it exactly captured the true General Tso’s flavor. For one thing, it was way spicy, which I admittedly should’ve expected, since the recipe called for 1 tablespoon of red pepper flakes. In addition, this sauce was not very sweet, and so the spicy flavors definitely dominated. So I didn’t end up with a real General Tso’s dish. That being said, it was still good, and I liked finding a new quick and simple sauce for vegetables, and I will definitely consider making this sauce again—or rather, some variation on it—again in the future!

Until we eat again,

Willie