Make Effortless General Tso's Chicken With A Game-Changing Shortcut

Nothing beats the convenience of takeout Chinese food ... except for the customizability of making your most beloved Chinese dishes at home. To sink your fork (or chopsticks) into the best of both worlds — convenience and homemade flavor — make your next batch of General Tso's chicken using your favorite fast food nuggets. All it takes is a drive-thru trip at your go-to fast food restaurant and about 15 minutes at home.

Simply coat those nuggets in the sticky sauce from our homemade General Tso's chicken recipe. We combine soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, brown sugar, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, cornstarch, garlic, and ginger. It's a dimensional sauce, albeit an admittedly involved ingredients list. For quicker prep, stock up on a bottle of premade General Tso's sauce during your next grocery run. We're digging Trader Joe's General Tsao Stir Fry Sauce, and Frank's RedHot makes a pretty killer General Tso's sauce, too.

To assemble the meal, preheat your oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit and pop in the nuggets. In addition to keeping them warm while you cook your rice and make your sauce, the oven trip also helps those nuggets crisp up texturally, preventing them from becoming overly soggy with the introduction of the sauce. Then, in a wide skillet or wok, gently warm the sauce to a simmer until it starts to slightly bubble. Then, just take the nuggets out of the oven and toss them in the sauce to coat. That's it.

Serve your fast food nugget General Tso's over a bed of white rice to help make the meal stretch even further. If you're feeling ambitious, you could even add a splash of steeped jasmine tea or some freshly shaved ginger directly into the rice cooker. It'll soak into the rice as it hydrates and cooks.

Garnish the plated meal with chopped chives, dried red chili flakes, and a shake of white sesame seeds (everything bagel seasoning works here too, and you can make it yourself at home). For a veggie component, you could serve it with a side of steamed broccoli or edamame, also slathered in that General Tso's sauce. Pair with a teapot full of hot lapsang souchong, or a chilled glass of sake.

Pro tip: If you order the McDonald's Sweet & Sour or the Chick-fil-A Polynesian sauce with your fast food nugs, these can totally be stirred into your homemade General Tso's sauce for a kick of flavor. Feel free to spice it up (literally) with other unconventional ingredients like mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns or whole dried bird's eye chilis. For vegetarian foodies, this hack also totally works with frozen plant-based nuggets. Simply coat those nuggets in your General Tso's sauce, being sure to omit any oyster sauce from the mix to keep it meatless.