General Tso’s Cauliflower
This is a healthier, low-carb version of General Tso’s Chicken, using baked cauliflower florets rather than fried chicken pieces.
Here is my latest cauliflower dish. I’m having fun replacing a lot of my chicken dishes with cauliflower instead. Now that spring is here and vegetable prices are coming down, I can really play around and experiment. It’s funny how all the trees and plants suddenly start growing again once March hits. A week ago, my fruit trees were completely bare. And now, they have dozens of new leaves on them. It’s like they all sprung up overnight.
Normally, General Tso’s Chicken involves fried chicken pieces and while I’m sure frying the cauliflower would make this dish even more amazing, it seemed to defeat the purpose of making it healthier by using cauliflower. So instead I roasted the cauliflower.
And it was still delicious. Our bowls were empty minutes after I put down my camera. And look, I finally created a cauliflower category!
General Tso's Cauliflower
Ingredients
- 1 head cauliflower, cut into bite sized florets
for the sauce
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 2 tsp hoisin sauce
- 2 tsp sesame oil
- 2 tbsp granulated white sugar
- 2 tsp cornstarch
- 6 dried red chilis, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F. Spread cauliflower florets on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for about 20-25 minutes until cauliflower florets are tender, flipping cauliflower halfway through.
- While cauliflower is cooking, make the sauce. In a small sauce pan, add all ingredients except chilis. Whisk sauce together until everything is mixed and cornstarch is completely dissolved. Bring sauce to a boil, whisking occasionally, until sauce thickens, about 2 minutes. Add in the chilis and let them simmer for about 1 minute in the sauce. Turn off heat.
- Toss cauliflower in sauce. Sprinkle fresh chopped scallions and white sesame seeds as garnish, if desired.
Notes
- Nutrition estimate does not include the dried chilis.
It tastes great — but I am wondering how big (grams?) is a head of cauliflower for this recipe?
The cauliflowers I get are about 500 grams and I found I needed to double the sauce ingredients to get anything close to what the pictures show.
We’re sorry, but we don’t have the exact weight for the cauliflower we used.
I had the same issue. Next time two heads!!!
YUM.. Just made this for dinner. I left out the sugar and put a squirt of lemon juice into the sauce.
glad you liked it!
We made it tonight! Adding it to my recipe rotation. Even the kiddos ate it up! YAY! I added some Quorn “beef” pieces to it and it worked great. The sauce wasn’t as thick as I’d like it to be, so, maybe add more cornstarch? I doubled the sauce recipe for we were putting it over brown rice. Thank you for sharing! It was tasty!
You can definitely add more cornstarch to thicken the sauce to your desired consistency. So glad you liked the recipe!
How is this recipe considered Keto using hoisin sauce? It’s so high in sugar/carbs…
I do not state this recipe is keto anywhere in this post
LOVE!! absolutely delicious I made it with some steamed brocolli and jasmine rice, so simple and just perfect, thanks!
so glad you liked it =)
I had this with quinoa. Fantastic recipe. I love rice, but I’m trying to go low carb and healthy too. It was a good pairing. Thanks for sharing.
Ooh love the idea of pairing with quinoa!
How AWESOME is this recipe? Pretty fricken awesome if you ask me! Using cauliflower in place of fried chicken is a healthy, genius alternative! You ROCK!
aww thank you!