What is General Tso’s Chicken?

General Tso’s chicken is a sweet, slightly spicy, fried chicken, which is served in the vernacular in American Chinese restaurants. The dish is most often considered Hunanese court, although it. In China and other countries home to the Chinese diaspora unknown before introduced by chefs returning from the United States

The dish is named after General Tso Tsung-tang or Zuo Zongtang, a Qing Dynasty general and statesman, although it. No recorded connection to him The real roots of the dish are in the post-1949 exodus of chefs in the United States.

Name and origin

The food is brought to the name of Zuo Zongtang, a Qing Dynasty general from Hunan in conjunction. Zuo itself not the court, as it is today ate, and the court is found neither in Changsha, capital of Hunan, nor in Xiangyin, the home of General Tso. Moreover, descendants of General Tso still living in Xiangyin, when interviewed, say they never heard of such a court.

There are several stories about the origin of the shell. Eileen Yin-Fei Lo says her book The Chinese Kitchen, which the court comes from a simple Hunan chicken, and that the reference to “Zongtang” was not a reference to Zuo Zongtang given name, but a reference to the eponymous “Zongtang “what”. “consistent with this interpretation, the dish name is sometimes in Chinese as” “found ancestral boardroom Zuo ancestral hall chicken.

The shell or its variants, by a number of names, including Governor Tso Chicken, General Gau Chicken, General Tao Chicken known General Tsao chicken, General Tong’s chicken, General Tang Chicken, General Fried chicken, General Chau chicken, General Joe Chicken Tso chicken, General Ching chicken, chicken house or just general chicken. The linguist Victor Mair, commenting on the various names for the dish and problem get it just says that he does not spelling “General Zuo Chicken”, that is to see, with the now standard Pinyin, but that he expects to to see it soon.



