This healthy General Tso Chicken recipe pairs crispy baked chicken with a spicy, flavorful sauce to rival your favorite takeout with a fraction of the calories. Since the chicken is baked instead of fried, each serving of this version has 40 grams of protein with just 13 grams of fat, 365 calories, and 5 WW Smart Points.
I wouldn’t call any recipe that requires breading chicken easy, but this General Tso chicken is well worth the effort. Trust me!
How to Make Crispy Baked Chicken for Healthy General Tso Chicken
If you follow my Instagram stories, you may have seen my 3-day saga of testing different chicken recipes. I started out with the Corn Flakes method like in my spicy popcorn chicken recipe but found the crispy exterior came off when tossing in the sauce.
I tried a few blends of Corn Flakes, flour, and corn starch before settling on the tried and true breadcrumbs and grated parmesan. This method also produces the lowest calorie General Tso Chicken out of the bunch.
To make the crispy baked chicken, all you need to do is mix an egg with black pepper, soy sauce, red wine vinegar (or any vinegar) and throw cubed chicken breast in for a quick soak.
Mix the breadcrumbs and parmesan together before adding about a tablespoon of the egg mixture and crumbling. This creates some larger crispy bits that you get with fried chicken.
Then it’s as easy as coating the chicken pieces and throwing on a wire rack to bake. If you have extra breadcrumbs or marinade, feel free to go double batter on a few pieces.
For a pre-breaded chicken option, check out the Just Bare lightly breaded chicken breast chunks I used for my healthy sweet and sour chicken or the Perdue Farms option I used for my Panda Express honey sesame chicken copycat.
How to Make the Healthy General Tso Sauce
The real star of the show in this recipe is the sauce. There are a couple carryover ingredients like vinegar and soy sauce so don’t sweat the long-ish ingredient list. At its core, you’ll need to prep a few veggies:
- scallions
- ginger
- garlic
- dried chiles
Other than those, all ya need to do is mix a few liquid ingredients in a bowl.
Cook the veggies in a tiny bit of oil to bring out their flavors before adding the liquid and cooking the sauce down to that thick, spicy General Tso sauce you know and love.
After the chicken is baked, toss in the sauce and you’re done. Easy peasy!
Modification Notes
I’ll run through a handful of ingredient questions I expect to pop up. If you have a question I don’t cover, drop a comment at the bottom of this post.
Breadcrumbs
If you need a lower carb option, crushed pork rinds are always a good alternative. You could also try gluten free breadcrumbs or the Corn Flakes method I mentioned above.
Red Wine Vinegar
You could substitute another vinegar like cider or balsamic (something tart) or even citrus like lemon juice. Honestly, I think any any vinegar would do the trick.
Swerve Brown Sugar
Swerve makes a line of erythritol-based (sugar alcohol) zero-calorie, non-glycemic sugar substitutes that I love and have used in everything from Nashville Hot Chicken Burgers to Peanut Butter Protein Cookies.
If you have regular light brown sugar on hand, rock that. The recipe only calls for 1/4 cup so it’s not like you’ll ruin the healthy part of this healthy General Tso chicken recipe.
Update: My baked orange chicken recipe uses Walden Farms pancake syrup in place of brown sugar. That could be another great brown sugar substitute.
Can I omit the veggies?
Yeah but don’t. 😉
Final Healthy General Tso Chicken Recipe Notes
Nutrition Facts
I split the nutrition facts into 4 servings and didn’t get the weight of each serving. If you need 100% accurate servings, you can weigh the entire finished recipe and divide by 4 (or however many servings you’d like). You could also count the total chicken pieces and divide that way.
Spice Level
As far as General Tso chicken recipes go, I’d say this fairly standard if not on the milder side. If you are spice sensitive, you can omit the chiles or cut the sriracha in half. Those are pretty much the only heavy hitters in the bunch.
Also, serving with rice, cauliflower rice, or other veggies should help balance out the heat. Need a low carb option? Check out my guide on how to make fried cauliflower rice in an air fryer.
I think you’re ready to go. Be sure to let me know what you think about this healthy General Tso chicken. You can leave a recipe review tag me in a pic on Instagram @mason_woodruff to let me know it’s Tso tasty.
Healthy General Tso Chicken
Crispy oven baked chicken tossed in a spicy General Tso sauce.
Ingredients
For the Crispy Baked Chicken
- 1 1/2 lbs Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast, cut into bite size pieces
- 1 Tbsp (15g) Reduced Sodium Soy Sauce
- 1 Tbsp (15g) Red Wine Vinegar, or your choice of vinegar
- 1 large Egg
- 1/4 tsp Black Pepper, optional
- 3/4 C (90g) Breadcrumbs
- 2 Tbsp (15g) Grated Parmesan
*For the General Tso Sauce
- 3 Scallions, finely chopped
- 3 cloves Garlic, minced
- 1 Tbsp Ginger, minced
- 4-6 Dried Arbol Chiles
- 1 1/2 Tbsp (24g) Toasted Sesame Oil, divided
- 1/2 C (120g) Chicken Stock
- 1/4 C (60g) Reduced Sodium Soy Sauce
- 1/4 C (48g) Swerve Brown Sugar, or light brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp (30g) Red Wine Vinegar
- 2 Tbsp (30g) Sriracha
Instructions
For the Chicken
- Preheat oven to 400F and spray a wire rack with nonstick cooking spray over a baking sheet. Set aside. (You can bake directly on a baking sheet if you don't have a rack.)
- Whisk the egg, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, and 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar, and black pepper together in a large bowl. Cut 3 large chicken breasts into small pieces and add to the egg mixture.
- Mix the breadcrumbs and parmesan in a shallow bowl. Add about a tablespoon of the egg mixture to the breadcrumbs and stir together to create a few small clumps.
- Coat the chicken pieces in the breadcrumbs and add to the wire rack. If you have leftover egg mixture and breadcrumbs, you can run a few pieces back through a second time.
- Bake for 14-16 minutes or until the largest pieces reach an internal temperature of 165F.
*For the General Tso Sauce
- While the chicken bakes, prepare the ginger, garlic, scallions, and remove the chiles from their packaging. Mix the remaining sauce, reserving 1/2 tablespoon of the sesame oil, ingredients in a bowl.
- Add the 1/2 tablespoon of sesame oil the a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once hot, add the scallions, garlic, and ginger. Cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.
- Add the chiles and cook for another 30-60 seconds before adding the liquid ingredients.
- Continue cooking over medium-high heat, stirring often, until the sauce thickens. This will take about 5-7 minutes, just in time for the chicken to come out of the oven.
- Reduce the heat to low and toss the baked chicken in the sauce before removing from the heat, topping with more scallions, sesame seeds, and serving with rice, steamed broccoli, or your choice of pairings.
Notes
*If you like extra saucy chicken or would like extra sauce for rice and veggies, consider doubling the sauce recipe.
- Each serving (1/4th the recipe) has 5 Smart Points.
- Nutrition facts do not include any nutrition info from the zero-calorie Swerve Brown Sugar.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 4 Servings Serving Size: 1 ServingAmount Per Serving: Calories: 365Total Fat: 13gCarbohydrates: 22gProtein: 40g
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Enny
Thursday 18th of July 2024
So good! Doing this for my meal preps now
Kara
Tuesday 5th of October 2021
I'll never order general tso again. This tastes so much better than any restaurant and was so easy to make. Will absolutely make this again.
Mason Woodruff
Tuesday 5th of October 2021
Thanks, Kara! So glad you enjoyed this one.
Megan Roberts
Monday 12th of April 2021
Healthy alternative when you are craving Chinese food on a diet! Delicious flavor and great for meal prep. We doubled the sauce recipe and loved it! Reheated well for meal prep too!
Katie Collins
Wednesday 7th of October 2020
This recipe is the bomb diggity!!! Yeah, there’s more work involved than dialing up your local Chinese restaurant, but the pay off is so great. It blew my mind how it tastes exactly like the real deal!
The only subs I made were using coconut aminos and then using some toasted bread in a food processor to make the bread crumbs.
I wouldn’t say this is a good recipe to meal prep as the chicken loses its crispiness eventually, but if you eat it right when you make it - wow!
Kim
Saturday 1st of August 2020
Made with regular soy sauce because, well... the pandemic is really messing with grocery store stock.
Whoops. Don't do it!! While it was still okay, the salt was definitely overwhelming. Won't make that mistake again. 👀 Otherwise, I'll certainly be trying this again when I can find the reduced sodium soy sauce. The other flavors were there!