Source: Carlsbad Cravings

Snapshot Review

My Rating:

My Husband’s Rating:

Will I make again?:  Yes!

Recipe Difficulty:  Easy!

Time Involved: There is time to marinate, and there are a few steps.

Occasion: Weeknight!

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My Thoughts on this Recipe

This Skinny General Tso’s Chicken from Carlsbad Cravings is a lighter take on the more traditional fried version. The main difference is that the chicken is baked rather than fried, but it still gets that delicious crispy crust. There is still one cup of sugar in the sauce, so I’m not convinced that it is actually “skinny,” but it is definitely lighter than being fried. The flavor of this chicken is as if you took it out of your favorite Chinese restaurant, and you know exactly what is in it! We really liked this!

Ingredients

The main ingredients are: chicken breasts, low sodium soy sauce, rice wine, water, sesame seed oil, Sriracha, garlic, ginger, cornstarch, eggs, flour, sugar and some spices. View the full recipe here.

Recommendations

This recipe has a few steps, but everything is pretty easy to put together. I only used about one pound of chicken because there were only two of us, and I left the marinade and sauce ingredients as they were written.

The marinade gives you a choice of rice wine or dry sherry, and I used rice wine. It also gives you a choice between Sriracha and Asian hot chili sauce, and I used the Sriracha. I also let my chicken marinate for about four hours.

I elected to actually hand dip my chicken into the eggs and breading mixture, rather than using the bag, because I wanted to make sure they were all coated evenly, so I cannot report on how the plastic bag technique worked.

I thought it was really smart to use a hot baking sheet for crisping the chicken in the oven and to broil it at the end. It worked well!

I didn’t add vegetables to the chicken, but next time I might try some broccoli, and I also left the sesame seeds off because I’m not the biggest fan.

Future Ideas/Variations

You could try using different types of protein and/or adding cooked vegetables to the sauce, but I really liked it as-is.

Final thoughts

This Skinny General Tso’s Chicken is perfect for when you are feeling like takeout, but you want to know what you are eating!