March 27, 2020–I saw this recipe for General Tsao’s Cauliflower in the Winter & Spring 2020 issue of Ingrain Magazine. I have no idea how this magazine arrived in my house but it was a welcomed addition to the many cooking magazines I already receive. In my continuing effort to eat ‘healthiest’ I decided to try these out. With the exception of the cauliflower, I had most of the ingredients on hand. I did have the hoisin or the sweet soy sauce so I improvised.
As the article states, they used cauliflower as a substitute for chicken to provide a modern day twist on General Tsao Chicken. They also provided a dipping sauce that is “loaded with all of those loud umami flavors that made the dish a classic” and can be used on numerous other food items.
After breaking down the cauliflower head into florets I combined the flour, garlic powder, kosher salt, and pepper in a medium bowl.
Since the sauce can be refrigerated for up to five days I decided to make it before frying the florets. After dissolving the cornstarch and water to a pan, I added the remaining ingredients for the sauce. As I mentioned I didn’t have sweet soy sauce so I used equal parts brown sugar and regular soy sauce as recommended by the recipe. In place of the hoisin, I used gochujang and tahini pastes and garlic
Now that the sauce is ready, it is time to mix up the batter with some water until it looks like pancake batter.
Set up your batter station and fry up your cauliflower.
I had some sugar snap peas so I fried up some of those also. As you can tell by the pictures, if you didn’t know this was cauliflower, you would think it was chicken especially with the sauce. I will definitely make this again.
