RECIPE: General Tso's leftovers

I love General Tso's Chicken--it's that "what I always order" thing from Chinese restaurants. Actually I order a lot of different things, but when it's been awhile since I've had a chance to get Chinese food, it's what I go for first. Well, that and an order of Crab Rangoon, but you get the idea.

If you really love Chinese food, the first time thru is awesome--hot crunchy veggies, tasty seasoned meats and mysterious-but-delicious sauce.

The catch is what to do about the leftovers, especially if you had it delivered--the minimum order amount for delivery is always more than one person can eat at a sitting (or two, if you get hungry half an hour after the first round), so you have all this food you don't want to waste, but you know it will not be nearly as luscious after you pull it out of the microwave, and who wants to reheat on the stove? It's a bitch--and personally it pisses me off, almost to the point where I don't call for delivery anymore because I waste two-thirds of the money it takes to do it and I don't exactly have cash falling out of my bra here.

(Yeah, it's all boobies in this bra--no stuffing of any kind but what Mother Nature gave me. You can quit wondering now.)

I think I found a way to make it behave in the reheat today--and this should work with other dishes with similar problems, like Sweet and Sour Whatever, and works wonderfully with a rice cooker (I'd ordered with friends over the weekend--btw Happy Birfday BFE!). If you are just reheating the rice that came with your order, don't bother reading this--who needs a recipe to know to toss it all in a damned pan and heat it up. All I have to tell you is DO go thru the longer time and extra work to reheat on the stove--you'll get Yuk Doo Fud when the microwave goes beep.

If you're cooking fresh rice on the stove, just do the steps halfway thru the time the rice bag says to cook the rice. You don't need my lame-assed recipes for that.

General Tso's Leftovers

1 partial order General Tso's Chicken, cold

2/3 c to 1 c. uncooked rice (use the amount your rice cooker calls for to make enough rice to feed the number of people you've got enough leftover food for--I had plenty for 2 people so I made 1 batch of rice, about 1/3 of the total amount my rice cooker will make)

Water to cook rice--follow the instructions on your rice cooker or on the bag of rice if using a pan.

Soy or duck sauce to taste

Measure rice and water into your rice cooker according to the instructions--I made enough rice for about 2 cups of cooked rice. Toss in the broccoli now if the restaurant used broccoli to garnish the box or pan like mine does. If they use green onion, you can toss that in now too--if they use big stalks, take a sec to chop them up and chuck them in.

Start your rice cooker (or turn on the heat on the stove) and let the rice go half the time it takes to cook the batch (my rice cooker takes 20 minutes for a batch, so I went 10 minutes). Quickly open the lid and dump in the leftover General Tso's, the sauce it came in plus whatever other ingredients your favorite restaurant puts in their version of this dish. Put the lid back on fast and let the rice cooker finish the cycle. Don't take time to stir the rice and meat together, just let it all heat.

When the cooker is done, let it stand according to your rice cooker's instructions. Open the lid, stir everything together, season with soy sauce and/or duck sauce and chow down! 2/3 of an order of General Tso's and 2 cups of cooked rice fed two of us with some left over (we have small appetites--a large appetite would have eaten most of what I had when I was done).

Most restaurants don't serve a lot of sauce in a takeout order of food, but if your order had a lot of leftover sauce you may want to kick down the water amount by a couple of tablespoons to account for the extra liquid.