Japanese cuisine

Katsudon

Name: Katsudon
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: Japanese cuisine
Ingredients: 2 Pork loin; 40 g Plain flour; 1 Egg for coating; 80 g Panko breadcrumbs; 1 Onion; 200 ml Dashi; 3 tbsp Soy sauce; 3 tbsp Mirin; 1 tbsp Sugar; 3 Eggs for the broth; 400 g Cooked rice; 500 ml Oil for frying

カツ丼

A breaded pork cutlet finished in sweet-salt broth with egg and slid onto rice.

Prep: 20 min
Cook: 20 min
Total: 40 min
Difficulty: Medium

Servings

Units

Ingredients

Pork loin — 150 g each, beaten flat2
Plain flour40 g
Egg for coating1
Panko breadcrumbs80 g
Onion — thinly sliced1
Dashi200 ml
Soy sauce3 tbsp
Mirin3 tbsp
Sugar1 tbsp
Eggs for the broth3
Cooked rice400 g
Oil for frying500 ml

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1
Nick the fat rim of each cutlet in a few places so they do not curl, season them and coat in flour, then egg, then panko.
8 min
2
Deep-fry at 170 °C for three minutes a side until golden. Drain on a rack rather than paper, so the underside stays crisp.
8 min
3
Cut the cutlets into strips a centimetre and a half wide without moving them apart — the shape matters when you serve.
4
In a small pan bring the dashi, soy, mirin and sugar to the boil, add the onion and cook for three minutes until soft.
4 min
5
Slide the cutlet into the broth, pour two thirds of the loosely beaten egg around it and cover for a minute. Add the rest, cover for twenty seconds more and take it off — the top layer of egg should stay loose.
3 min
6
Slide everything in the pan onto the rice in one movement, sauce and all.

About the dish

Katsudon is built on a contradiction: a crisp cutlet is deliberately drowned in broth. The point is for the crumb to drink the sauce without going soft all the way through, and there is about a minute in which that is true.

The egg goes in twice and is never beaten smooth. Part of it has to stay loose, because that is what binds the cutlet to the rice once everything lands in the bowl.

In Japan it is eaten before an exam: katsu sounds like the verb to win. The superstition has held for a century.

Worth knowing

— Use a pan barely bigger than the cutlet. In a wide one the sauce spreads and boils away before the egg sets.
— Dashi can be water with a teaspoon of instant hondashi. An ordinary stock gives the wrong flavour altogether.
— Let as little time as possible pass between frying and saucing. A cooled cutlet no longer gives the contrast.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories: 780 kcal
Protein: 42 g
Fat: 32 g
Carbs: 78 g

Useful for this recipe

Oven Temperature Converter