Healthier General Tso's Chicken

This weeks recipe is a healthier version of General Tso's Chicken. Here is the link for the recipe.  This one was another one that I really didn't have to fight anyone to eat. My youngest just announced that he wasn't hungry at all, so he wasn't eating. He's the picky one & so I'm not sure how this recipe will go over with picky eaters because he wasn't interested in eating at all. But my girls both loved it & ate it without complaint. The hubbie and I really liked it too. This one will definitely be put in the book of recipes to have more often. I cooked up a pan of brown rice to go with it. I cook my brown rice in the pressure cooker & it cooks it a lot faster. Here is the post about how I pressure cook my brown rice.

I love Chinese food, so I was really excited when I found this recipe. I love finding healthy versions of my favorite foods.  I will say that with this recipe had a few things in it that I have never used or cooked with, like Rice wine vinegar, Hoisin sauce, and fresh ginger. Maybe I'm just not that experienced of a cook, but I was a little hesitant to make this recipe because of those few things I had never used. But I am happy to announce that I was able to find everything for the recipe at the store really fast and with no problems.

I have never cooked with fresh ginger, ever. So I was a little unsure what to do with it.  I just googled it when I got home and it was pretty easy to figure out! :) I peeled it with my regular vegetable peeler, chopped it up and I was good to go. The recipe didn't specify a certain amount of ginger to use, so I just cut off a chunk, called it good, and hoped for the best.

This is the stuff I used. It was kinda fun cooking with fresh ginger, I think I'll use it a lot more in the future.

Anyways, I was reading through the recipe and it says that it's only 25 minutes with prep and cook time! Yeah... not really!! :) I was soooo hoping that would be true! This took me about an hour to make. I picked a day that I didn't have anything going on after the kids got home from school, just in case it took way longer than it was supposed to.  I'm glad I had a low key night to do this on. It just seemed like it was a lot more work than I was expecting it to be.  Maybe the more I make it, the faster I will get at throwing it together. But right now, this one is not one that can just be thrown together.

This also took longer to cook than the recipe said. It took almost double the amount of time to cook & we ended up having to put the oven on broil to get it to brown & crisp up a little.

Even though this recipe was a little high maintenance, I still really liked it. I will definitely make it again. Just on a night when I don't have a bunch of other things going on. :)