Chicken katsu

Method

1. Stir the tonkatsu sauce together first so the sugar has time to dissolve: Worcestershire, ketchup, soy sauce, sugar, and the garlic if you are using it. Taste it. German ketchup runs sweeter than American, so you may want less sugar and a little more Worcestershire. Set aside.
2. Shred the cabbage as finely as you can, ideally on a mandoline. Drop it into cold water for 10 minutes, then drain and dry it well. This makes it crisp and takes the raw edge off.
3. Butterfly each breast if you are working from large ones: slice horizontally almost all the way through and open it out flat. Lay each piece between two sheets of cling film and pound it to an even 1 cm with a mallet or the flat of a heavy pan. Even thickness is the whole game. A cutlet that is 2 cm at one end and 5 mm at the other will be raw in the middle or dry at the edges, and no amount of care with the oil will fix it.
4. Season both sides with salt and pepper and leave the cutlets out for 10 minutes to lose their fridge chill.
5. Set up three shallow dishes: flour, beaten egg with the 8 ml of oil whisked in, and panko. The order matters. Flour dries the surface so the egg has something to grip, the egg is the glue, and the panko is the armour. Skip the flour and the crust slides off in the pan.
6. Dredge a cutlet in flour and knock off everything loose. Dip it in egg and let the excess run back. Lay it in the panko and press the crumbs on firmly with your palm on both sides. Set it on a rack and repeat. Let the breaded cutlets sit for 10 minutes so the coating sets.
7. Pour 2 to 4 cm of oil into a wide heavy pan and bring it to 170°C. Without a thermometer, drop in a few panko crumbs: they should sizzle steadily and float straight to the top, not sink and not brown instantly.
8. Fry one or two cutlets at a time, never crowding the pan. Give them 3 to 4 minutes total, turning once, until deep golden. Thicker cutlets need a minute more. The chicken is done at 74°C in the centre. Scoop out loose crumbs between batches or they burn and darken the next cutlet.
9. Hold each cutlet vertically over the pan for a few seconds to let the oil run off, then rest it on a wire rack, never on paper towel. Paper traps steam under the cutlet and softens the crust you just built. Let the oil come back up to temperature before the next batch.
10. Rest for 2 minutes, then slice across into 2 cm strips. Serve with the cabbage, a lemon wedge, rice, and the sauce poured over or served alongside.

Notes

• Why panko and not Paniermehl. Panko is made from crustless bread baked by electric current, so it has no crust and dries into large jagged flakes. Those flakes absorb less oil and stay open and crunchy. German Paniermehl or Semmelbrösel is fine dust that packs tight, soaks up fat, and gives you a dense schnitzel crust. It is a good crust, but it is not katsu. Panko is sold as “Panko” in every Asia-Markt and now sits in the Asian aisle of larger Rewe and Edeka stores.
• Sauce shopping. Bulldog and Kagome tonkatsu sauce are hard to find outside an Asia-Markt in a big city. The four ingredients above get you most of the way there. Worcestershiresauce is on the shelf of every German supermarket next to the vinegar. If you want it thicker and rounder, add a teaspoon of oyster sauce, and if you want the Nagoya style, whisk 2 tablespoons of red miso into a little dashi with sugar instead.
• Oil. Rapsöl or Sonnenblumenöl. Do not use olive oil, and do not use butter. The sauce keeps two weeks in the fridge in a jar, so make a double batch.
• The cabbage is not garnish. Fried food wants something raw and cold beside it. Weißkohl is standard; Spitzkohl is more tender and shreds more easily. Slice it thinner than you think is reasonable.
• Failure modes. Oil below 160°C gives you a greasy pale crust. Above 185°C the panko is dark before the chicken is cooked. Crowding the pan drops the temperature hard, which is the most common cause of both. A single thermometer solves all three.
• Leftovers. Cold katsu is the point of a katsu sando the next day. It is also what goes on top of Japanese curry. Do not microwave it; if you want it hot again, 8 minutes in a 180°C oven on a rack.
• Pork instead. Pork loin, 1.5 cm thick, is tonkatsu proper. Snip the band of fat and connective tissue at the edge in a few places or the cutlet curls in the pan. Fry it a little longer, 5 to 6 minutes.

Sources used

• Just One Cookbook: Chicken Katsu
• Japanese Cooking 101: Chicken Katsu
• Just One Cookbook: Tonkatsu Sauce
• Sudachi Recipes: Tonkatsu Sauce 3 Ways