Recomended Recipe: Healthier General Tso's Chicken & Fried Rice

So a buddy of mine sent me a recipe for healthy (...well...healthier) General Tso's Chicken. The wife and I thought this would make for a great dinner date recipe, so we added some fried rice and steamed broccoli and I have to say...it was pretty dad-gum good! The photo to the right is of my plate, right before I completely inhaled it!

I always like it when people share awesome recipes, but I like it even better when they've actually made the recipe and can provide some additional details that are helpful. Lucky you...I'm about to hook you up!

First, here are the links to the recipes online:

General Tso's Chicken: http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/general-tso-8217-chicken-tastier-more-healthy-takeout-214300486.html

Fried Rice: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/fried-rice-restaurant-style/

Broccoli: We steamed it...thank you pampered chef steamer.

Helpful Tips:

1. Unless you are some kind of a master chef, don't try to make this on your own. It took both of us working together to be able to make everything in a reasonable amount of time and have everything finish cooking at about the same time.
2. We used half of the dishes in our kitchen to make all of this...so plan on your dinner date also including cleaning up the kitchen.
3. If you stick to the recipe in the link above, you probably want to rename it Ginger Chicken. The ginger flavor in the recipe definitely overwhelmed the other flavors, so I would suggest omitting the ginger...unless you LOVE ginger. Don't get me wrong, it was still good, but next time we make this, we're going to drop the ginger and see how it tastes.
4. The recipe for the General Tso's makes enough to feed 4, or makes enough for 2 meals for 2 people. Regarding the fried rice recipe: for 2 people just do 1 cup of rice unless you plan to eat a TON of fried rice. If you got 4 hungry people you are feeding, go ahead and do the 2 cups.
5. For the fried rice, we made the vegetable preparation easy. We used french cut (matchstick size) cooking carrots...just buy a bag of them at Wal-Mart in the veggie section. This way you can skip the carrot cutting and boiling. We did forget to add the peas...but we'll add them next time.
6. Some of the ingredients for this recipe are a little hard to find, i.e. the hoisin sauce. We found it at The Fresh Market.

Other Comments:

The fried rice turned out perfectly, but you'll definitely have to season with soy sauce, salt, and sesame oil to taste (had to add and taste, add and taste).

The texture and consistency of the chicken and the outer breading was perfect. The chicken was tender, and the breading held together perfectly even when tossed with the sauce afterwards. I don't have a lot of luck making my own breading for stuff...but this one worked out pretty well!

Health wise, this is definitely a lower calorie version of a take-out favorite. It is extremely low fat, but it is loaded with sodium. Aside from the sodium, this definitely passes as a healthy meal.

This makes for a great cooking date...if you and your spouse don't ever do that together...shame on you! It's cheap, fun, and practical.

Enjoy!

- MP