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General Tso’s Soy Curls! Easy weeknight stir fry with soy curls and veggies. Vegan General Tso’s Chicken. Gluten-free, Nut-free Recipe Jump to Recipe
This general tso’s Sauce + Soy Curls makes for an amazing weeknight meal. Soy curls are marinated in the from scratch homemade general tsos sauce mixture, then stir fried to crisp. Veggies added in along, and the rest of the marinade is then cooked down to thicken. Serve this easy stir fry with rice or noodles!
Soy curls absorb moisture differently and sauce amount preference also varies, so make another full or half back of the sauce and add more if needed.
Ingredients for general tso’s Soy curls
- For the sauce you need, soy sauce or tamari, sugar, rice vinegar, mirin, toasted sesame oil, sambal oelek chili paste, ginger and garlic
- For the stir fry you need soy curls, green onions, garlic, bell peppers, zucchini or carrots
How to make General Tso’s Soy curls stir fry
Mix the marinade. Add soy curls and mix and soak. Toss twice in between, Heat a skillet over medium hi heat.
Add oil. When hot, add garlic and green onion and toss for a few seconds
Fish out the soy curls from the marinade and add to the pan, cook for 4 to 5 mins to brown some edges. you can also toss the soy curls in cornstarch before using for crisping up the soy curls. Add the peppers and veggies and mix. Add a pinch of salt and cook for 2 mins
Add 1 tbsp cornstarch and 1/4 cup water to the marinade and mix well.
Add the sauce mixture to the pan and mix well. Cover and cook for 3 to 4 mins to thicken. Stir once in between. Also taste at the time to adjust flavor. Add salt, sugar, heat if needed.
Let sit covered for another min.
Serve with rice and blanched broccoli. garnish with green onions and fresh black pepper 
More stir fries
- Sticky ginger Sesame Tofu Veggie Stir fry
- Hoisin Noodles and Tofu stir fry
- Cashew Tofu and veggies
- Soy-free tofu stir fry with sunbutter sauce
- Lemongrass Tempeh with sesame noodles
- Sticky Sesame Cauliflower
Vegan General Tso's Soy Curls
Ingredients
- 4 oz soy curls, (dry), see notes for where to buy and sub options
General tso's Sauce:
- 3/4 cup warm water /veggie broth
- 3 to 4 tbsp sugar or coconut sugar or other sweetener
- 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce use tamari to make gluten-free
- 2 tsp mirin rice wine
- 2 to 3 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1.5 tsp toasted sesame oil
- 2 tsp sambal oelek chile paste optional or sriracha or pepper flakes to taste
- 2 tsp grated fresh ginger
- 3 cloves minced garlic
Stir fry:
- 1 tsp oil, (safflower or sesame)
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1/4 cup chopped green onions, ,white portions as well, use greens for garnish
- 1/2 red bell pepper
- 1/2 green bell pepper
- 1 cup zuchini or carrots or other veggies
- 1 Tbsp cornstarch
Instructions
- Mix the marinade. **Reserve 1/2 cup of the marinade in another bowl to use later. Add soy curls to the marinade and mix and soak for 10-15 mins. Toss twice in between so all soy curls marinate well.
- Heat a skillet over medium high heat, and add the oil. When hot, remove the soy curls from the marinade and add them to the pan. (You can also toss the marinated soy curls in cornstarch before using for extra crispness.) Cook for 4 to 5 minutes to brown some of the edges, then in the last minute of cooking, add in the garlic and green onion.
- Cook, adding 1/2 teaspoon extra oil, if needed, until the onion starts to turn translucent. Add the peppers and veggies and mix. Add a pinch of salt and cook for 2 mins
- Add 1 tbsp cornstarch and 1/4 cup water to the remaining marinade (reserved plus remaining) and mix well.
- Add the marinade sauce mixture to the pan and mix. Cover and cook for 3 to 4 mins to thicken. Stir once in between. Also taste at the time to adjust flavor. Add salt, sugar, heat if needed. Let sit covered for another min.
- Serve with rice and blanched broccoli. garnish with green onions , toasted sesame seeds, and fresh black pepper.
Video
Notes
More Saucy: For saucier, double the sauce, add in some more veggies if desired. Szechuan version:
Heat 2 tsp oil. add 1 tsp crushed schezuan peppercorns and cook until roasted.
Drain the oil into the marinade and use. Soy curls are not same as soy chunks that are chewier and take much longer to cook. Soy curls can be found in some grocery stores or online on amazon. Use Tofu or chickpeas to substitute soy curls . For Tofu, use firm or extra firm(10 to 14 oz), press for 15 mins, then toss in cornstarch and bake at 400 deg F for 20 mins or pan fry to crisp. Add to the skillet after adding the sauce. Or use 1 can chickpeas drained Nutrition is for 1 serve, does not include rice or noodles.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Wooow made this tonight and doubled the recipe. This was incredible!
thank you!
This was absolutely excellent!! So far it’s my favorite way to prepare soy curls. Thank you so much for this recipe 🙂 !
🙂
Did you rehydrate the soy curls before marinating?
no, they soak in the marinade
My husband and I both loved this dish! I am curious, though, about how you calculate the “prep time.” It took me about 40 minutes to prepare all the vegetables–grating and mincing garlic and ginger, cutting zucchini and carrots, chopping green onions, dicing peppers, etc. It was worth every second, but the 10 minutes suggested prep time seems to me to be a little misleading.
It’s usually overlapping time with cooking. It should be atleast 20 mins. I’ll update it
Can these soy curls be frozen once cooked?
Yes
This recipe is delicious! I make several Chinese dishes with soy curls but this is my favorite. None of my other Chinese recipes have you soak the soy curls in the sauce, which really ups the flavor.
I also discovered a new variation! I love soy curls, but don’t cook with oil so they don’t crisp up in the skillet. I like to cook them in my air fryer before adding them to the skillet. I usually make enough soycurls for 2 meals and cook them in the air fryer. I use half the soy curls the first night, and save the rest for the second night. This time, I overcooked my soy curls a little.
The next day I was on the run and got really hungry. The only thing that was ready to eat in my frig was the soy curls for that night’s dinner.
I ate those soy curls and loved them. I liked that they were a little over cooked because they stayed crunchy.
I’m heading to NYC for a day trip tomorrow and am fixing a cooking a batch of Gen. Tso soy curls to take with me. They are my new jerky!
Now I”m envisioning what I could do with other marinades….. Bacon? Chicken flavored? Lots of possibilities!
Thanks so much for this recipe!
The last time I made this recipe,
YUM! this sounds amazing! thank you for trying, i’m glad you love the soy curls!
Absolutely delicious every time we make it! Even my meat-eating father who usually turns up his nose at vegan meat replacements had seconds.
wow! that’s how you know. glad you both love it!
How do you get the soy curls to be crispier and not have a spongy texture?
Bake longer
So good!
thank you!
Sooo good! It was my first time cooking with soy curls and they didn’t disappoint! My family loved this recipe. Thanks Richa.
soy curls are the best. thank you!
Ermygawd, I made this last night and it was sooooo flavour packed, delicious and easy. Even the non-vegans had seconds and just like traditional General Tso’s chicken, I wanted to sneak into the fridge after midnight for another nibble.
Haha love to hear it!
I made a double batch of this today so that I could use my whole 8-oz. bag of soy curls. I didn’t have mirin, so I just tried to come close to that. After marinating, I cooked the soy curls in the air fryer. Because I had doubled and because I used more vegetables, I didn’t have room in the cooking pot for everything , so I cooked the vegetables and then mixed those and the soy curls in a huge bowl, thickened the sauce in the cooking pot, and added the amount of vegetables/soy curls we wanted for the amount of sauce there was. I had vegetables and soy curls left over, so will make more sauce tomorrow. I’m glad I made the double batch, because otherwise we would not have leftovers. We really liked it. I also think the marinated, air fried soy curls would make good jerky and make make a batch just for snacking.
yay! great idea to double for leftovers. glad you liked it! 🙂