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.
Update November 2025: I actually now have an entire category on my site dedicated to recipes using these frozen lightly breaded chicken bites. Check it out here for more inspiration!
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
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
- 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.
Another fantastic recipe! We love making Chinese food and had to try this one out. Used everything the same as listed and it was mouth watering! Great flavor and so much better than going to a restaurant.
Phenomenal! GREAT spice! The chicken cooked perfectly. Will definitely be making this again!!!!
I find myself always wanting Chinese takeout and being disappointed. This recipe is what I always dreamed Chinese food to be and actually made me like cauliflower rice! Try it you won’t be disappointed!
Was a little hot but definitely tasty. Chicken wasn’t as crispy as yours but after you add the sauce it was still delicious. I’ll leave out some of the peppers next time but adding this one to the “will make again” column. 🙌🏻
We love chinese in our house but I can never find a premade sauce that is even good or healthy. This whole recipe is fantastic amd cured our take out craving. We baked our chicken pieces the other day and I wish I would have air fried but it was still good. Always add broccoli, no rice needed. I have made this recipe about 5 times and it’s great!
This recipe was the bomb.com, won the boyfriend over which is hard to do sometimes. We skipped the rice and just served with broccoli and loved it like that. We make this on the regular.
Planned on making the Orange Chicken but forgot the orange at the store so at the last minute I switched gears and went with this. The coating process was simple and baking on the cooking rack was genius, why have I never done that before? I used pork rinds instead of bread crumbs and it turned out great. Super flavorful and way better than takeout.
Big hit with the family. …served the chicken (air fried instead of baked) to my youngest because she is super sensitive to spice, and left out the peppers because they didnt have them at my Walmart.
Even without the sauce…a good chicken recipe!
Okay I LOVE spicy. Maybe a little too much. So this recipe was right up my alley. Since starting my diet I have died for the taste of Asian food but I know how terrible I feel after eating it thanks to the sodium. This recipe cured my desire and then some. I added more of the spices and added some cooked fresh green beans.
Another fantastic recipe! We love making Chinese food and had to try this one out. Used everything the same as listed and it was mouth watering! Great flavor and so much better than going to a restaurant.