"A Stir‐Fried Masterpiece"
December 2, 2016 8:15 AM   Subscribe

Peng Chang-kuei, the inventor of General Tso's Chicken, has died at the age of 98. Peng first made the dish in the 1950s while working for the Nationalist government in Taiwan, naming it for Zuo Zongtang, a statesman and military leader from the Qing dynasty famous for having put down the Taiping Rebellion (previously). When the dish made it to the U.S., the New York Times' Mimi Sheraton raved about it using the words in the post title.

General Tso's Chicken previously on the Blue, and on FanFare.
posted by Cash4Lead (31 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity, than the discovery of a new star.
--Brillat-Savarin
posted by mrdaneri at 8:30 AM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]


I ate General Tso's Chicken the first time I went to a Chinese restaurant. I'm told they have other nice dishes there too. (Not literally true, but pretty close.)
posted by double block and bleed at 8:37 AM on December 2, 2016


Guess I know what we're having for dinner tonight.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:39 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm gonna have to go get some for lunch. To Chef Peng!

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posted by Strange Interlude at 8:39 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Guess I know what we're having for dinner tonight.

Wǒ jīn wǎn juédé xiàng jī! (Google Translate for "I feel like chicken tonight!")
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:41 AM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Line shamelessly stolen from a friend: "all deep fryers in the US will be lowered to half-temp in mourning."
posted by Drastic at 8:49 AM on December 2, 2016 [20 favorites]


We used to patronize a Chinese takeout that threw a free General Tso's on every order over $35 so I never ever ordered it. We'd just order enough other stuff and I'd just throw it in the fridge and heat up bits and pieces whenever I wanted a hit of chicken. It wasn't as good as fresh, but it was still good, and it's a win-win for the Chinese restaurant and the place that makes my blood pressure medicine.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:53 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


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posted by Aizkolari at 8:53 AM on December 2, 2016


The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity, than the discovery of a new star.
--Brillat-Savarin


Great quote, but I can't read that name without hearing the narration, "Five years ago, a man's fantasy became a reality..."
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:06 AM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]


Jennifer 8 Lee's book (and TED talk) tipped me into a deep rabbit hole of reading about Chinese food. My favorite was Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China Paperback by Fuchsia Dunlop.

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posted by Bee'sWing at 9:19 AM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


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2016 doesn't give a %$#@. No one is safe.
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:24 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


He was 98, so I think 1918 was more likely to blame.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:29 AM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]


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Panda Express finally rolled their version out about 2 months ago. Not to my liking at all. Too many vegetables, not enough sauce, not enough spicy heat....just not good. I hope they go back into the lab and come up with a better version....where I live, no one has it on the menu (and we have a very large Asian population here...in Hawaii.)
posted by KillaSeal at 9:48 AM on December 2, 2016


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posted by Kabanos at 10:00 AM on December 2, 2016


I never knew the actual origins of General Tso's chicken. Thanks for that.

Once had a girlfriend who would get very excited by the dish. As we ate, she'd tell me the story of General Tso and how he was defending a small town under siege by an evil Warlord. The end was near. His men were hungry and could no longer fight. The small & overly cute children in the town would ask the good General: "is the Warlord going to kill us?!?" The General knew something had to be done and it wouldn't involve normal military tactics.

He grabbed his best cook and went to the cooking tent. On the way, one of the Warlord's snipers took a shot at the General, missed, and killed the cook instead. Undeterred, the General kept walking. In the tent, he grabbed everything from what little food was in sight: a handful of chicken, swept up the small bread crumbs still on the table, and a bowl of every spice available. He sent his best scouts out, the ones who could still walk despite their hunger, to find the little peppers which only grew in this land. Only half the scouts returned with only 6 tiny peppers between them.

The General threw everything in the pot. His mother's ghost whispered in his ear. Thoughts of his mother, the men he lost, and the hungry children wailing outside made him weep strong tears, which salted his dish. Finally it was complete. The general took his pot and gave a some to the children. Gave some to his men. And gave some to the villagers. The Goddess of Compassion, also weeping, flew over head and ensured the pot never ran out, no matter how much the people ate.

That night, with their bellies afire from the little peppers and spirits buoyed by the happy cries of the overly-cute-but-no-longer-hungry children, the soldiers and General marched out of the town, broke the siege, and killed the evil Warlord.

"And so every time we eat the dish, we must remember and give thanks to General Tso and his men for their bravery and compassion", my girlfriend would say. And then she'd tell me how General Tso invented the fortune cookie when he devised a new scheme for sending hidden messages across enemy territory.
posted by honestcoyote at 10:08 AM on December 2, 2016 [27 favorites]


I'm fond of the version at my delivery place in Bernal Heights, San Francisco. It's just as overly breaded and achingly sweet as every other crappy delivery Chinese General Tso's Chicken. But they have hit on the brilliant technology of cutting holes in the delivery carton so the steam escapes and it stays crispy on its way to my fat lazy ass sitting on the couch watching Arrow. So that's a plus.

For a Hipster take on the dish, Mission Chinese Food has a General Tso's Veal Rib that's sort of interesting. Veal short rib instead of chicken, and not breaded. Instead the meat is dry fried and crisps up reasonably well. The sauce is sort of an elevated sweet/hot sauce like the classic. The recipe is in Chef Bowien's cookbook.
posted by Nelson at 10:14 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Damn you, 1885!
posted by dannyboybell at 10:16 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


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posted by doctornemo at 10:20 AM on December 2, 2016


I've never been a fan of the dish, but I will always mourn the passing of a fine chef.

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posted by JeffK at 10:23 AM on December 2, 2016


(pours out soy sauce for Mr. Peng...)
posted by the sobsister at 10:23 AM on December 2, 2016


David Bowie. Prince. Brexit. The election. Neo-Nazis. The Malheur terrorists getting off scot free. Authoritarianism on the rise worldwide. Global atmospheric CO2 levels topping 400 ppm. The Michigan/Ohio State game.

AND NOW PENG CHANG-KUEI.

2016: it's out to get us.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 10:29 AM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


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How strange, I was just watching the documentary the other day, and amazed that he was still alive.
It's not really a thing here, so I suppose I'll have to try and make it myself - in honor of Peng
posted by mumimor at 11:20 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


@Drastic: > "all deep fryers in the US will be lowered to half-temp in mourning."

With all due respect to Chef Peng, this comment hits close to home: My first job as a newly-minted 16 year old was as a fry cook at the local KFC. This was back in 1979, but I'm sure the job sucks as much now as it did BITD. The KFC store manager was ecstatic after he hired me, as he hadn't had a day off in a month. This was a HUGE clue as to what I was getting myself into, but at 16 it flew right over my head.

Anyway, on my first day the manager spent three hours training me in the kitchen on breading frozen chicken parts, working the fryers, and ultimately cleaning up at the end of the shift. It was a hell of a lot of absorb in three hours, especially for a 16 year old who had zero experience doing anything, much less running a kitchen.

When I showed up for work the second day expecting more training, I learned that the manager had taken day off and I was in charge of the entire kitchen, with no backup and no one to provide support. This...did not go well.

My whole shift was dicey, but the low point was my complete misunderstanding of the ververyveryveryvery simple indicator light on the deep fryer: when the light was on, it meant that the fryer *WAS CLIMBING BACK UP* to operating temp; when the light was off, it meant that the fryer *WAS AT* operating temp. So, LIGHT OFF = AT TEMPERATURE. In my 16 year old head, however, I believed that I wanted that light to be on all the time, as I thought that LIGHT ON = AT TEMPERATURE. So I cooked my batches of chicken, and like a fool every time those fryer lights went off I went over and stirred the deep fryers to bring the lights back on. And I felt good about it, like, "I have a job and I am working! I am cooking up this chicken! Look at me work!". Now, some customers complained to the cashiers about the chicken being underdone, but I was 16 and to the best of my knowledge -- which was, y'know, zippo -- I was doing everything I had been taught, and it wasn't like there was anyone there to tell me otherwise. So I shrugged it off and kept cooking the chicken as I had been. I somehow made it through the shift, but I sure served up a lot of undercooked chicken that day. Looking back, this is not a happy memory.

Alas, after needing 2+ hours to clean up/hose down the kitchen at the end of my shift (which kept everyone there an extra 1.5 hours, and which prompted the cashiers to give me much grief but no help), I decided this wasn't such a great job after all, and I quit the next day. The manager was disappointed but not surprised. He was also very grateful for the day off, but he had no idea how lucky he was that I hadn't killed anyone with my mad deep fryer skillz. Society dodged a greasy, undercooked bullet when I hung up my apron.

So, as I former chicken fryer w/far less skill, I humbly add my . to the tributes offered to Chef Peng on the occasion of his passing. RIP, sir. As I discovered, it is harder to properly fry a chicken that it seems.
posted by mosk at 11:34 AM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]


Speaking of, I just came back to the thread to post this, which is also from Serious Eats:

Popeye Tso's Chicken (General Tso's Chicken Made with Popeye's Chicken Nuggets) Recipe

As somebody with a Popeye's up the street and no patience for deep frying, I'm very excited to try this.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:31 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Monty Burns: "Ah, General Gao... you were a bloodthirsty foe, but your chicken is delectable!"
posted by 445supermag at 4:13 PM on December 2, 2016


Nelson, Win Garden is in Glen Park, not Bernal Heights. It's a block away from the Glen Park BART station. It's my local go-to Chinese restaurant. Yummy!
posted by blob at 9:27 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Tangential but related: for anyone who, like me, craves "food court" chicken from time to time, I can attest that Lucky Peach's "Mall Chicken" recipe is spot on. You probably have most of the ingredients in your kitchen, too.

We had it last night, in fact. The sauce is really great dribbled over rice, and scratches an itch that would otherwise result in a trip to Panda Express and a case of instant regret.
posted by offalark at 9:46 PM on December 2, 2016


I think I'm going to walk down to my neighborhood Chinese for lunch. All of a sudden, out of the blue I seem to be craving General Tso's Chicken. I have no idea why.
posted by james33 at 7:32 AM on December 3, 2016


Man. More than ever I want try Peng Chang-Kuei's original version, which sounds like a really good Hunan dish. (As opposed to the over-sweetened, over-sauced Americanized version. Let those speak who have something good to say of it.)

I'm not against innovation -- I've had some excellent Sichuan dishes which, for no apparent reason, included Bugles as an ingredient -- but I do think General Tso's Chicken has suffered in translation.
posted by McCoy Pauley at 9:50 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


This man's contributions made my life a little bit happier than it otherwise would have been.

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posted by riruro at 9:56 AM on December 3, 2016


McCoy Pauley's comment had me looking; here is Recipe: General Tso’s Chicken As adapted by the crew of The Search for General Tso and therefore something like Peng Chang-kuei's original. The key thing for me is the near absence of anything sweet. A bit of tomato paste, and "dash of sugar Chef Peng would not approve".

I ordered my Win Garden chicken last night (and thanks for the location correction, blob). It was delicious. It also was way, way, way too sweet. Now I want to try some that's not sweet at all.
posted by Nelson at 11:08 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


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