Looking for a Paleo General Tso Chicken recipe? You’ll want to make this General Tso’s Skinny Cousin! It’s paleo, gluten-free, dairy-free, whole30-compliant and packed with flavor.
Combine the chicken, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar and spices in a large baggie or other container and put in the refrigerator to marinate while you prep everything.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
Chop the shallot, mince the garlic and chop the broccoli
You are going to use just about every bit of a medium-large sized orange. First, zest the orange (the whole thing should equal roughly 1 Tbsp of orange zest). Second, slice the orange in half. Juice one half of it and save. Remove the peel of the other half and chop the orange (it will be messy/juicy – that’s ok – use all of it)
Pull the chicken out and put it and the marinade in a cast iron skillet or baking dish and bake 20 minutes covered; 25 minutes uncovered (or until cooked through)
While the chicken is baking, make the sauce. Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in pan on medium-high; saute shallot and garlic until soft. Add the orange juice, chopped orange, orange zest, ground ginger, liquid amino acids, and crushed red pepper. Stir.
Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil. As soon as it comes to a boil, reduce the temperature to medium-low for 5 minutes and then down to a low simmer.
Taste the sauce. I have made this when the oranges were on the sweeter side and the sauce needed no additional sweetener. I have also made it when the oranges were light on sweetness and a little more sour/bitter and it needed 1/2 to 1 tsp of honey to balance it. If you aren’t eating paleo or whole30, you can use sugar instead of honey if you prefer.
About 10 minutes before the chicken is done (don’t forget to pull the cover or alum foil off after the first 20 minutes), bring a pot that fits your steamer basket in it to a boil. Once it’s boiling, add the basket with broccoli and cover and steam until just soft (4-6 minutes). You want the broccoli to be soft enough to eat, but far from mushy (and still bright green). If you don’t have a steamer basket, I highly recommend getting one … but until you do, you can buy a bag of frozen broccoli meant to be steamed in the microwave. 🙂
While the broccoli is steaming, turn up the sauce to medium heat, add the whole bag of riced cauliflower to the pan of sauce and let cook for 5 or so minutes.
When the chicken is done, pull it out of the oven, then out of the pan and cut it into bite-sized pieces, then add it to the sauce.
Toss a handful of spinach on each plate or in each bowl. OR, if you want a pretty presentation or picture, arrange the spinach neatly like in my pictures (note: on a regular night in, I’m just tossing those leaves in … it tastes the same – lol. 🙂 Add a ladle or two of the hot chicken/riced cauliflower and sauce mixture on top of the spinach and then add some broccoli to the top (or you can mix the broccoli in with the chicken/sauce first). Add some extra red pepper flakes if you want more spice. Dig in and enjoy!
