General Tso's Chicken

This was dinner Monday night: Homemade General Tso's Chicken.

It's always a bit of a gamble trying out a new recipe for a familiar take-out dish. Lots of questions go through my head: Will it taste the same? Will it be exponentially more difficult than picking up the phone and ordering it? Will it save me money? But mostly, will it taste the same?

Let me tell you, this was FAN-tastic. It tasted almost exactly like your standard delivery dish, and took probably the same amount of time from start to finish as it would waiting for someone to deliver it (unless you have a super speedy delivery guy in which case, I want his number). Plus, it gave me the option to use chicken breasts instead of thighs, so it was a tiny bit healthier.

After we were finished cooking, our house even smelled like a Chinese (American) restaurant. For days afterward. Honestly, it was a small price to pay for how yummy this was. With this, plus my standard stir-fry recipe in my repertoire (I'll post it the next time I make it) I can't imagine I'll be ordering Chinese food anytime soon. Now, if only I could figure out how to make a good version of Thai Drunken noodles...

Here's the recipe. I followed it pretty closely with these exceptions:
1) I used chicken breasts instead of thighs.
2) I had to add a splash of water (maybe 1 tsp) to the marinade so it was less like a paste and more like something that could actually coat the chicken.
3) I used low-sodium soy sauce, which I highly recommend.
4) Although I didn't actually make these changes, if I were to make it again (which, uh YES), I'd halve the amount of fresh ginger root in the sauce and double the chili-garlic sauce to make it a little spicier.
5) We had ours with steamed kale instead of broccoli because I JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH.