Tonkatsu (Japanese Breaded Pork Cutlet)
Cuisine: Japanese
Region: 日本各地
Servings: 2人分
Tonkatsu (Japanese Breaded Pork Cutlet) is a home-style meat dish. It is cooked when the center shows no raw red when cut and the juices run clear. Ingredients and step-by-step instructions are below, with notes for home cooking.
Ingredients
- Pork loin (tonkatsu cut, 1.5 cm thick), 2 slices (150 g each)
- Salt, 1/3 tsp
- Pepper, a pinch
- Cake flour, 2 tbsp
- Egg, 1
- Water, 1 tsp
- Fresh panko (or dried panko), 1 1/2 cups (about 45 g)
- Oil for deep-frying, as needed (at least 3 cm deep)
- Cabbage, 1/8 head
- Tonkatsu sauce, as needed
- Japanese mustard (karashi), to taste
- Lemon wedges, 2
Steps
- Take the pork out of the fridge about 15 minutes ahead so it comes close to room temperature. With the tip of a knife, make cuts every 2–3 cm along the sinew between the fat and the lean meat (4–5 cuts per side). This keeps the meat from curling up when fried.
- Lightly pound the whole surface with a meat mallet or the back of a knife, then push it back into its original shape with your hands. Season both sides with salt and pepper just before frying.
- Shred the cabbage as finely as possible, soak it in cold water for 5 minutes to crisp it, drain well and chill in the fridge.
- Beat the egg well with the water. Dust the pork thinly with flour and shake off the excess, dip it in the egg, then pile on plenty of panko and press lightly with your palm so it sticks. Leave for 5 minutes to let the coating set.
- Heat the oil to 170°C (when you dip in dry chopsticks, fine bubbles rise gently). Slide in the pork and fry for 3 minutes without touching it. Turn it over and fry for another 2–3 minutes, until the bubbles get smaller and the coating is golden brown.
- Lift it out and stand it up against a rack. Let it rest for 3–4 minutes so the residual heat cooks it through. During this time the juices settle and are less likely to run out when you cut it.
- Slice it into 2 cm strips by drawing the knife toward you, and plate it with the cabbage, lemon and mustard. Pour sauce over and eat.
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Notes
It is cooked when the center shows no raw red when cut and the juices run clear. For thicker pieces, fry at 160°C for 5 minutes and finish at 180°C for 30 seconds to cook it through without burning.
Fresh panko gives a light, standing, crisp coating. With dried panko, mist it lightly with a spray bottle before use for a similar texture.
Made with tenderloin, it becomes hire-katsu. It has less fat than loin, so fry it for a slightly shorter time.
Simmer leftover tonkatsu with onion in a sweet-savory dashi and bind it with egg to make katsudon.
Origin and history
Tonkatsu is a Japanese-born Western-style dish (yoshoku) of thick-cut pork coated in panko and deep-fried in plenty of oil.
Its model was the Western cutlet: thin meat coated in fine breadcrumbs and pan-fried in a little fat. In the Meiji era, a Western-style restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo, began serving a "pork cutlet," and serving it with shredded cabbage is also said to have started around then.
In the Showa era, restaurants in Tokyo began deep-frying thick pork in plenty of oil like tempura and cutting it into pieces easy to eat with chopsticks, and the dish spread under the name "tonkatsu." The set-meal style with rice and miso soup also took hold to suit Japanese dining customs.
Today there are many spin-offs such as katsudon, katsu curry and katsu sandwiches, and because "katsu" sounds like the word for "to win," it is also eaten for good luck before exams.