Chinese Food, but not Take Out?

The title of this post may confuse you. Well, I as well was throughly confused by the extreme yumminess of this dish. It was so good, and Ben and I were so proud of our selves. It tasted exactly like General Gao's Chicken, except not fried, didn't cost 8 dollars a dish and was healthy. I know I know all things that don't seem to be real. But its true. It was a great experiment, if only we had made more.


The credit to this dish has to go to Kevin, on his blog I found the original recipe, and made a few changes to it. I thought that the pineapple juice may have too strong of a flavor and over power some of the other more delicate flavors of this dish. I'm always worried about too much pineapple juice, it can make a good cocktail go south with just a splash too much, so I substituted orange juice to keep some acidity. I also wanted to add in chili flakes for a little more heat along with the ginger. I wouldn't make any changes to the recipe the way that mine came out. We both thought it was spectacular.


General Gao's Chicken (Healthy Style)

1 lb chicken (cut into strips)*
4 tbsp light soy sauce
4 tbsp orange juice**
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tbsp minced ginger root
1/8 tsp chili flakes
Pam
1 tsp sesame seeds

*We used the precut "stir-fry chicken strips" that you can buy in the supermarket
**Our orange juice turned out to be a month old, so we just freshly squeezed an orange, either will work.

Mix soy, juice, ginger, honey, sugar, chili flakes and chicken in a zip lock bag and marinate for 45 minutes in the refrigerator. This allows the flavors to start melding together and breaking into the chicken.

Once you have let the chicken marinate Pam a sautee pan and add all chicken and marinate to it, should be over high heat. Chicken will cook through and sauce will start to thicken in about 8 to 10 minutes. During this time we also cooked up some boil-in-the-bag brown rice to go with our chicken. When the sauce is thick turn off the heat and place on top of a mound of rice. Garnish the chicken with the sesame seeds.


Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm so good.