Did you know that President Richard Nixon played a role in popularizing General Tso's chicken in the United States? Or that the popular Chinese dish was not born in China? Watch learn more of the untold truth of General Tso's chicken.
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00:00Did you know that President Richard Nixon played a role in popularizing General Tso's
00:05chicken in the U.S.? Or that the popular Chinese dish was not born in China? To learn more
00:10of the untold truth of General Tso's chicken, keep watching.
00:15General Zhou Zongtang was actually a political administrator, nobleman, and military leader
00:20born in the early 1800s in Hunan, China. He fought to suppress the rebellions and uprisings
00:25that threatened to topple the imperial government at the time, with methods both tactically
00:30brutal and, in other cases, diplomatically brilliant. Whether it was overseeing the conquest
00:35of central China or using taxation and the implementation of Western technology to quiet
00:40dissidents, his methods earned him respect both among the powerful and the people.
00:45All in all, the real General Tso was a fierce traditionalist, fighting for the preservation
00:49of Chinese culture and heritage. So it is both ironic and in some ways fitting that
00:54most of the world would come to know his name through a dish that only loosely resembles
00:58the food from his region. After all, most cuisine from Hunan shies away from the blending
01:03of sweet and savory flavors.
01:06Perhaps the most influential force in the explosion of Chinese restaurants was the racist
01:11law intended to squash Chinese immigration, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The act
01:17effectively stopped any new immigrants from coming to the U.S., even denying re-entry
01:22to legal immigrants who had returned home for a visit, with a few key exceptions for
01:26merchant visas. Merchant visas allowed certain businessmen to travel and even bring employees
01:32with them into the country. Restaurants just so happened to be on that list of approved
01:37merchants.
01:38At the time of the law's passing, a large portion of the 300,000 Chinese immigrants
01:42living in America was based in San Francisco. Rather than compete with one another for the
01:48few businesses afforded to them within the law, a large number of immigrants spread across
01:52the country. The number of Chinese restaurants doubled between 1910 and 1920, and doubled
01:58again between 1920 and 1930, a restaurant surge that paved the way for the invention
02:03of all of our Chinese takeout cult classics.
02:08Long before General Tso's Chicken made it to the U.S. menus, it was born in Taiwan,
02:12at the restaurant of Chef Peng Cheng Kuei, a former banquet chef for the Chinese Nationalist
02:17government. Chairman Mao's revolution forced Peng into exile in Taiwan from his home province
02:23of Hunan. Craving the taste of home, Peng began riffing on Hunanese-style dishes, giving
02:29them his own spin and making them more accessible to non-Hunanese diners.
02:34One such creation featured crispy chunks of breaded chicken flash-fried with spicy peppers,
02:39vinegar, ginger, and soy sauce, making for a tangy, spicy dish that was neither traditional
02:44nor completely unfamiliar. He called it Tso Zung Thang Chicken, the second most famous
02:50general from Hunan, right behind Mao, who had pushed Peng into exile.
02:55Peng claims to have named the dish when preparing it for visiting U.S. Admiral Arthur Radford
03:00in 1952. In his own way, Peng used the dish as both a tribute to a Hunanese hero and a
03:05subtle criticism of the revolution.
03:08When Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, it was the first time a president had visited
03:13China since the Communist Revolution in 1949.
03:16We have today seen the progress of modern China.
03:21Anti-Chinese sentiment had been high since the Korean War, leaving Chinese restaurants
03:25in the lurch. But with news reports revolving around a series of state dinners, Americans
03:30watched as the president indulged in foreign meals they'd never even heard of.
03:35By the following evening, a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan had recreated the entire menu,
03:40dish by dish, for their customers.
03:42Overnight, the demand for Chinese food skyrocketed. The demand for Peking duck, Nixon's favorite
03:47dish of the trip, went from being one of the least popular dishes in American Chinese restaurants
03:52to one of their bestsellers. While most of the Chinese-American restaurants in the U.S.
03:57served largely Americanized versions of Chinese food, the Nixon-inspired boom gave Chinese
04:02chefs the chance to feature more traditional dishes, as well as test out new ideas.
04:07It's no coincidence that General Tso's chicken appeared on the menu that same year, riding
04:12on the tails of an American wave of interest in Chinese cuisine.
04:16Perhaps one of the savviest businesspeople to ride the wave of the Chinese restaurant
04:20boom following Nixon's diplomatic dinners was Michael Tung. With numerous restaurants
04:25to his name, he sent his head chef, T.T. Wang, to Taiwan to recruit workers and to pick up
04:30new recipes.
04:32It just so happened he sent him at the same time as a rival New York chef, David Kay,
04:36who made his journey to Pung's restaurant. Both chefs specialized in Hunanese cuisine,
04:41and Pung was the man to learn from at the time. Additionally, both returned to their
04:46restaurants with strikingly similar menus to Pung's in Taiwan, and both brought their
04:50own riffs on Zou Zang Feng chicken.
04:53Tung stuck closely to the original flavor, tangy and sour, but added mushrooms, hoisin
04:58sauce, and water chestnuts. Wang's reinvention of the dish proved to be the winner of the
05:03day, making the chicken noticeably crispier and the sauce considerably sweeter.
05:08Both chefs' restaurants won critical acclaim and four-star New York Times reviews, but
05:13it was Wang's version of the dish that would come to be the standard General Tso's recipe
05:17eaten around the country.
05:18I'll try this for sure again next time.
05:21Perhaps it was chef Lucas Sin who put it best when talking to author Francis Lam on an episode
05:27of Splendid Table. They were talking about Chinese takeout food when Sin said,
05:31I am so sick and tired of people telling me that this Chinese food, made by Chinese-Americans
05:36for the last 100 to 200 years, is inauthentic. It's such a silly way to characterize a cuisine
05:42that spurred on generations of immigration."
05:44While the authenticity police might take umbrage at the very idea of General Tso's chicken,
05:49it would be disingenuous to call it inauthentic. While it may not be traditional Hunanese food
05:54as they would eat it in Hunan, it was made by a chef from Hunan. Not only that, it was
05:59made for the express purpose of sharing Hunanese-style food with a foreigner, Admiral Radford, and
06:05even the name seems to have been Chef Peng's way of sharing his culture with his neighbors
06:09while in exile and beyond. This seems to be exactly what General Tso's chicken will continue
06:14to do for hundreds of Chinese-American chefs around the U.S.