Healthier General Tso’s Chicken (Easy Skillet Recipe)
Sticky, glossy, sweet-and-spicy chicken with all the takeout swagger and none of the deep fryer. This lightened-up General Tso’s skips the batter, skips the wok full of oil, and gets its signature sweetness from a simple trick I can’t stop bragging about: a reduction of 100% pineapple juice, simmered down until it’s thick and almost caramel-like. There’s no sugar added to the sauce at all… the sweetness comes entirely from the fruit juice itself. The whole thing comes together in one skillet in about 20 minutes of cooking, and it’s packed with xx grams of protein per serving. I call it General Joy’s Chicken, LOL.
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For years, a grease-spotted Chinese takeout menu lived in our junk drawer like a family heirloom. It survived two moves. And every single time we ordered from it, someone got the General Tso’s. So it was only a matter of time before I created my own health-ified version. The pineapple juice reduction was a happy accident that afternoon… I was trying to build sweetness without dumping in sugar, and boiling it down concentrated the flavor into something genuinely luscious.
One technique worth knowing before you start: velveting
That egg white in the marinade isn’t a typo, and it isn’t optional if you want restaurant-quality chicken. It’s a Chinese cooking technique called velveting, and it’s the main reason takeout chicken is so wonderfully tender. The egg white forms a thin, protective coating around each piece that seals in moisture and keeps the lean breast meat silky as it hits the hot pan. It takes 30 seconds of whisking and pays you back tenfold. Thirty minutes of marinating gets the job done; overnight is even better.
Try my Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry.
Healthier General Tso’s Chicken (Easy Skillet Recipe)
Ingredients
For the marinated chicken:
- 1 egg white
- 2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
- 1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch chunks
For the sauce:
- ¾ cup pineapple juice
- 3 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
- 3 tablespoons low-sodium chicken broth
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon rice vinegar, see notes
- ¾ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¾ teaspoon ground ginger, or 2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger
- ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch or arrowroot flour, see notes
To finish:
- 6 scallions, white and light green parts thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, optional
- Nonstick oil spray
Instructions
Marinate the chicken:
- In a medium bowl, whisk the egg white with the soy sauce and rice wine until the egg white is loosened and no longer stringy, about 30 seconds. Add the chicken and stir so every piece is evenly coated — the mixture will look thin and a little cloudy, which is exactly right. Cover the bowl (or transfer everything to a zip-top bag) and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to overnight.
Make the sauce:
- Pour the pineapple juice into a small saucepan and bring it to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, uncovered, until the juice has reduced to about ¼ cup and thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon, 7 to 10 minutes. Keep an eye on it toward the end — it goes from syrupy to scorched quickly. Remove from the heat.
- Let the reduced juice cool completely, about 10 minutes. This step matters more than it sounds: cornstarch seizes into stubborn lumps the instant it hits hot liquid, and once they form, no amount of whisking will smooth them out. To speed things up, pour the reduction into a small bowl and pop it in the fridge for 5 minutes.
- Once the reduction is cool to the touch, whisk in the soy sauce, rice wine, chicken broth, sesame oil, rice vinegar, garlic powder, ginger, red pepper flakes, and cornstarch. Whisk until completely smooth and no white specks of starch remain. Set aside.
Cook and finish:
- Coat a large skillet generously with nonstick oil spray and warm over medium-high heat. Remove the chicken from the marinade with a slotted spoon or tongs, letting the excess drip off (discard the leftover marinade), and add it to the hot pan in a single layer. Cook without moving for 3 minutes to get some color, then stir and continue cooking until the pieces are cooked through and no longer pink in the center, about 4 minutes more. If your skillet is on the smaller side, cook the chicken in two batches — crowded chicken steams instead of sears.
- Give the sauce one more quick whisk (the cornstarch settles fast) and pour it into the skillet with the chicken. Stir constantly, scraping the bottom of the pan, until the sauce bubbles and thickens into a glossy glaze that clings to every piece, 2 to 3 minutes.
- Remove from the heat, scatter the scallions and optional sesame seeds over the top, and serve right away, while the glaze is at its shiniest.
