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General Tso's chicken
General Tso's chicken
Alternative names [note 1]
Course Main
Serving temperature Hot
Main ingredients Chicken, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar,
Shaoxing wine or sherry, sugar, sesame oil, scallions, hot chili peppers, batter
Variations Orange chicken (Westernized version)

Media: General Tso's chicken

General Tso's chicken
Traditional Chinese 左宗棠雞
Simplified Chinese 左宗棠鸡
Transcriptions
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 左公雞
Simplified Chinese 左公鸡
Transcriptions

General Tso's chicken (左宗棠雞 Zuǒ Zōngtáng jī) is a sweet and spicy deep-fried chicken dish.
Name

The dish was retroactively named after Zuo Zongtang (Tso Tsung-t'ang) (1812–1885), a Qing dynasty statesman and military leader from Hunan Province.[2][3] Chef Eileen Yin-Fei Lo speculated that name "Zongtang" was not a reference to Zuo Zongtang, but rather a reference to the homophone zongtang (宗堂), meaning "the hall of the ancestors".[4] The dish is known by many alternative names, mostly replacing Tso with a different surname.[note 1]