Tonkatsu – Pork Cutlet

Here is an easy and delicious meal that has a seriously passionate following in Japan.  Most people eat this dish at one of the millions of Tonkatsu restaurants, but it can also easily be cooked at home with common ingredients.

For each serving, you will need:

1 pork cutlet (boneless loin chop about half an inch thick)

a little flour

Coarse breadcrumbs

half an egg

oil to fry it in

1. Simply tenderize the cutlet with the back of a knife or a mallet
2. Lightly coat it in flour, shaking off any extra
3. Dip it in some lightly beaten egg
4. dip and press it into the breadcrumbs coating it evenly ( at this point they can be frozen for latter cooking)
5. Deep fry in oil at 340 degrees F (170 deg C) until both sides are golden.  Alternatively they can be slowly shallow fried to the same degree.
6. Cut it into bite size pieces and serve

Tonkatsu is traditionally served with a pile of finely shredded raw cabbage and sometimes a bit of grated carrot, some tomato or other salad vegetables.  Over the top of the tonkatsu, most people like some specially labelled Tonkatsu sauce (which if you can’t buy it, you might try replacing it with western style BBQ or Worcestershire sauce).  A little lemon juice also is very nice and some people add some mustard, but I leave this off.

 This is hardly health food as the pork itself as well as the method leaves it crisp but loaded with fat.  But it doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t plan to make it your staple diet.  I tend to buy a large tray of 10 pork cutlets at a time.  I crumb them all at the same time and then freeze those that I don’t cook immediately.  That way I have a stock ready to quickly cook up at short notice and the whole dinner can easily be on the table in half an hour.