If you’ve eaten at a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. any time in the past few decades, odds are good that you’ve seen (or tasted) General Tso’s chicken. It typically consists of heavily battered and deep-fried bites of chicken tossed in a sauce that is sweet, salty, sour, and a little bit spicy. If you know a thing or two about traditional Chinese cooking, you may not be surprised to learn that General Tso’s chicken is a Chinese-American dish not commonly eaten in China. However, you may be surprised to learn that the meal does actually have roots leading back to Hunan cuisine, and the name even comes from a real general. The modern American form may be hardly recognizable to its inventor, but it is one on a long list of dishes that few realize were invented in the U.S. — or at least changed enough to be considered unique.
This world-famous Chinese-American dish was first produced in Taiwan by a Hunanese chef named Peng Chang-kuei. While his training was in Hunanese cuisine, this particular dish was first made to suit the tastes of a visiting American admiral. Despite the desire to appeal to the admiral’s American palate, the original dish largely stuck to Hunanese technique and tradition, which includes not mixing sweet and savory flavors, so the original dish was quite different from its modern Chinese takeout form. That said, given that the dish began as an attempt to wow one American, perhaps it should be of little surprise that in the following decades it came to dominate the menus of restaurants across the United States.
The origin of Chef Peng and General Tso’s chicken
Chef Peng Chang-kuei was born in 1919 to a poor family in Changsha, the capital of Hunan. He began his culinary career early, as an apprentice to a famous chef of the time, and his hard work led him steadily up the ladder. By the end of World War II, he was in charge of the banquets for the Chinese Nationalist Party. It was in this role that he first concocted this now-famous dish, General Tso’s chicken, during a three-day banquet for the state visit of Admiral Arthur W. Radford in December 1954.
The first iteration of General Tso’s chicken was pieces of chicken that were first fried, then sauteed with garlic, ginger, and chilies. The flavors were traditionally Hunanese: salty, sour, and spicy, with none of the modern sweetness. Peng named the dish for General Tso Tsung-tang (also sometimes spelled Zuo Zong-tang), a famous commander from Hunan Province best known for maintaining order with military campaigns against several rebel groups during the time of the Qing dynasty.
At the time that he invented the dish, the chef did more than just the Chinese Nationalist Party banquets. He was also a very famous chef in Taiwan and operated a restaurant in Taipei called the Mandarin. But despite his fame, the quality of the dish, and its auspicious name, General Tso’s chicken did not catch on in Taiwan. It wasn’t until it made the trip halfway around the world to New York City that it found both fame and its final form.
How the U.S. palate changed General Tso’s chicken
In 1973, Peng moved to the U.S. and opened a Hunan restaurant called Uncle Peng’s Hunan Yuan in New York City. But, as it turned out, his signature dish had preceded him. A New York City chef by the name of Tsung Ting Wang opened his Hunan-style restaurant, Hunam, in 1972. On the menu was his own take on General Tso’s chicken, a recipe he borrowed from Peng. But Wang knew his way around the American palate, so he didn’t just copy the recipe; he transformed it. He turned a dish with traditional Hunan flavors into something that would appeal to the American masses by thickening the batter and sweetening the sauce — and clearly he did it well.
In perhaps the most unexpected twist of this culinary saga, General Tso’s chicken has made its way back to Hunan province, where some restaurants have added it to their menus as a traditional Hunanese dish. While it is not nearly as popular there as it is in Chinese-American restaurants, clearly there is some magic to a dish that can seemingly find a home just about anywhere. These days, you can find just about anything you want done in the style of General Tso’s chicken. There is the Chinese-American takeout classic General Tso’s chicken recipe, but you can also experience General Tso’s baked tofu or General Tso’s chicken wings. Heck, we even have a recipe for General Tso’s cauliflower.
