The Best Japanese Dishes At Home_

Today we're gonna cook the most popular foods from Japan, including sushi, wagyu, chicken katsu curry, and even the famous omurice omelet. But we're kicking things off with a delicious tonkatsu ramen made completely from scratch. A good ramen starts with good broth, and a good broth starts with good bones. The first step is to rinse off all our bones. Hidden in the bottom of this bowl is actually a pig's foot, but I covered it because I thought maybe not everyone wants to see a pig's foot. But if you do, feel free to go ahead and try to find it. We're using this pig's foot because it's a really traditional and important part of getting that flavor for our ramen broth. The next step is to add all our bones to a large pot. Once again, I'm gonna keep that pig foot real hidden in there. And once all your bones are in there, go ahead and cover them up with water. The reason we're doing this is to get a nice, clean broth. And if you don't, your broth will end up being cloudy and dirty. Look at that. You can already see all the nastiness coming out of those bones. We're trying to get rid of all that and more. Once your bones are covered, turn on the heat, and then bring it up to a boil and let it go for 10 minutes. This right here is what's inside all those bones. So if you didn't understand why we cleaned them before, now I think you will. Once we've been boiling for 10 minutes, I'm gonna fish out all the bones because we wanna give them one last rinse before we make our broth, just to make sure they're extra clean. And don't even try. I'm still not gonna show you the pig's foot. With one last quick rinse in cold water, our bones are clean and ready. These are the aromatics we'll use to build the base of our broth. We've got onion, which I'm gonna quarter and leave the skin on, garlic, which I'm gonna cut in half just like this, then ginger, which I'm gonna carefully cut right down the middle, and these green onions, which I'm gonna leave whole. Now into our cleaned pot, I'll add in some oil as well as all our aromatics and stir until fragrant, one or two minutes. Wow, I love the smell of these. Just make sure as you stir these around that you do not char anything because that will give you a dirty broth, which we do not want. After a few minutes of stirring, we'll add our bones, see if you can catch the pig's foot. I'm doing a good job hiding it. I bet none of you have seen it still. As well as a few white mushrooms, here's how we start to build that umami flavor, and then cover this up once again with water. Bring it to a strong simmer. If you haven't seen what that looks like before, this is it. Let it cook for 12 hours with the lid slightly ajar, adding more water as needed to keep the bones covered and constantly skimming all the junk off the top. While our broth cooks, we're gonna move on to make our chashu pork. This is that beautifully rolled barbecue Japanese pork that you may have seen before, and when you make it right, it's one of the best parts of ramen. This right here is pork belly. If you look from the side here, you'll see the cross section looks just like a piece of bacon, which is exactly what it is. The first thing we need to do is remove this skin on top, so I'll lay it skin side down on my cutting board, and then just like removing the skin from a filet of fish, I'll go back and forth carefully with my knife until everything separates and it looks like this. Next, we'll take our pork belly and roll it up as tight as we possibly can. The tighter you can get it here, the cleaner it'll eventually be for those nice portions we cut for our ramen. I'm now gonna take some butcher's twine and tie it as tightly as I can around the pork, and I will admit, it took me two or three times to get it right, but if you have someone there to help you, it'll probably make it a lot easier. As a next step, in a cast iron pan over medium high, I'm gonna get this deep golden brown, and the reason I'm not starting off with any oil or fat in the pan is because I've got plenty right here. I'm gonna play a little game with myself here and see how perfectly golden brown I can get this thing on all sides. Having a weirdly shaped object like this is really great practice for getting a steak golden brown. If you can do this, you can definitely do a steak. The one complaint I always have about pork ramen is that they don't give you enough of this meat. I feel like you eat one or two bites of it and it's gone, and then you're left with this big bowl of ramen. What I love about making it at home right now is that I could literally eat this entire thing in my bowl of ramen if I really wanted to. As we continue to cook this pork belly, we're gonna render off a lot of that fat, which will continue to tighten up this roll of pork, giving us a cleaner cut of pork on our ramen. If you've ever had a bowl of ramen where the pork is too fatty, it means they didn't spend enough time rendering off the fat during this process. Once your pork is beautiful golden brown like this, go ahead and set it off to the side. For our char siu pork marinade, I'll add soy sauce, mirin, some sliced ginger, few cloves of crushed garlic, then some green onion and a little sugar. And once we brought this up to a simmer, add in your pork belly and let it cook with the lid slightly open for two hours until it looks like this. Look at how bubbly and beautiful that looks. Now, all we do is turn off the heat, and once it's cooled down, we'll place it in the fridge overnight. With our pork done, we're gonna move on now to make our soft boiled ramen egg. We'll add our eggs to some boiling water and cook them for six and a half minutes exactly. And once that time has passed, carefully collect them all and transfer them to some ice cold water. Once they've had time to cool down, we'll peel our eggs, and as you do this, be careful not to break them. We wanna keep them whole. As you peel them, put them in a bowl off to the side because we're gonna marinate them in just a moment. I feel like everyone has their own methods on how to peel eggs. Usually, I actually like to peel mine under running water like this because I feel like the water gets into the shell and separates things quickly. But at the end of the day, I feel like there's really no right or wrong answer as long as you don't break the egg. To marinate our eggs, we'll go into our bowl with some sliced ginger, some crushed up kombu, which is a seaweed that gives tons of umami, one clove of crushed garlic, as well as some soy sauce, mirin, and sake. We'll cover this up. Oops, I spilled a little there. And place this in the fridge overnight along with our pork. Before we make our ramen noodles, isn't that exciting that we're making our own noodles? Since some of the bones in here are uncovered. Oh, you can't see the pig foot. I'm gonna pour some more water to top things off and cover it up again. And now, our noodles. Into a bowl with some flour, I'll add some baking soda and a pinch of salt, and then I'll mix this up until fully combined. Now, with some alkaline water, you can look up what that is on your own time, I'm gonna slowly pour it into the flour, continuing to mix with those chopsticks until it begins to form this crumbly, shaggy dough. And once the dough eventually looks like this, go ahead and dump it out on your cutting board and get in there with your hands to mix it all together. We're gonna knead this and treat this just like we would any normal pasta dough, with the goal being to develop that gluten and get us those nice, iconic, chewy ramen noodles. Once your dough eventually looks something like this, go ahead and shape it into a ball, then cover in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. While our dough is resting, check this out. If you look at our broth now, it's becoming milky. And what's happening is that all that collagen is breaking down from the bones and turning the broth nice and creamy. This is what I love so much about a tonkotsu broth. You get creaminess without actually adding any cream. It's amazing. Once our ramen dough has rested, we'll open it up and it should, by now, feel a bit more relaxed. It will still be harder and drier than most normal pastas because ramen dough is intentionally drier than normal pasta, but it will definitely be workable. Working with one piece at a time, I'll press out each piece of dough and then roll them through my pasta maker, adding just a touch of flour whenever needed to make sure things don't stick, but not too much or we'll dry it out. We're gonna roll this out to level six on our pasta maker. And once I've finished each sheet, I'll flour it and set it off to the side while I repeat the same process with the others. Just wait until you see when it gets rolled into the actual ramen noodle shape. That is one of my favorite things to watch in the kitchen. Once all our sheets are made, we'll switch out the attachments. And like I said, this is one of my favorite parts. These are beautiful homemade ramen noodles. It's definitely extra effort and an extra mess in your kitchen to make them yourself, but I think it is so incredibly worth it. I mean, I just gotta do it. I had to do it. Okay, let's focus. Cut your noodles into nice portions. You should be able to eyeball that and measure them out on your own. This is another cool part about making them at home is that you can make them as long or as short as you want. Remember also as you're making these noodles to keep flouring them, because they will stick together if you don't flour them. These noodles, especially because they're fresh, will cook really fast. So we'll set them aside until right before we're ready to make our ramen. When your ramen broth is done, turn off your heat. And by now you should have a creamy, milky looking broth, even though we never added any cream. We're gonna strain this out now. Just to make it easier, I'm gonna take out all the bones and I don't have to worry about hiding that pig's foot anymore because everything's dissolved and broken apart. Carefully strain this out, mixing as needed if it needs any extra help pushing that liquid through the strainer. And this next step here is optional and not traditional, but I love miso and now is the time to add it. We add miso off the heat because high heat will kill the flavor. I'm gonna let this cool off uncovered and then refrigerate it until I'm ready to use it. We've done all the hard work, so just a few steps left. All of these steps are basically to finish things off and get them ready for plating the ramen. For starters, I'll cut the string off the pork. Funny story, in one of my biggest challenges ever in MasterChef, I left the string on the lamb. I tied it around the lamb to try to make the lamb look really nice and then I left it on there and they tried to bite it and there was string. It was really awkward. And once that string is off, we're gonna cut this into nice thin slices. Ooh, yeah. This is some of the best smelling pork you're ever gonna be around. Now for the fun part, fire. Lay your pork down on a baking sheet lined with a wire rack, doing your best to be nice and gentle with it so it doesn't fall apart. And then use a torch to caramelize the chashu pork. Not too much, but just enough to get that beautifully caramelized color and flavor. Kind of like making a creme brulee. Once you feel you've gotten that beautiful color on the first side, go ahead and flip everything over. This one was an end piece, but unlike with bread, the end pieces with chashu pork are actually good. Although this wouldn't be as traditional to serve on a bowl of ramen, so I'll probably save that for a snack. And we don't even need to caramelize it. I love listening to and watching how quickly the fat bubbles up and pops. This is such a great way without that much extra effort to make things look really good, and it's also fun. If you don't have a torch like mine, don't worry. You can easily toss this under a boiler at home and get a very similar result. Once it looks like this, we can start our final plating. First, we need to cook our noodles. Our homemade noodles may have dried out a bit by now, but as long as you move them around a bit, they'll separate quickly when you drop them into that boiling water. They'll cook extremely fast. The second they float, they're done. Grab your ramen bowl and put them straight in from that boiling water. Turn off your water, but leave it there. You'll see why in just a second. One thing I love about ramen shops in Japan is the chefs will often take a pair of chopsticks and they'll pick up the noodles over and over again so that they can layer them in a nice, beautiful pattern on the top of your bowl. I don't have the technique like they do to layer these noodles, but I am gonna try my best to get nice, clean, and presentable layers of noodles. Once our noodles are layered, we'll take our broth, which I put back over low heat to get nice and warm, and then we'll pour this over the ramen to fill our bowl. Now it's finally starting to look like ramen. For the egg, I'll heat it really quickly in that same ramen water, just five or 10 seconds to warm it up, and then cut it in half and place it on top. Next, we'll add our chashu pork, and then add whatever other toppings you like. I like to plate it a little different with different ingredients every single time. It's funny, sometimes when I spend that long making something, I'm almost too tired to taste and I just wanna go to sleep, but I at least need to try the broth and some of our homemade noodles. Itadakimasu. Next up, we're moving on to homemade sushi, which is my personal favorite Japanese food, and we'll begin by making our sushi rice. When some people think about sushi, they just think about the fish, but the rice is equally important. If you plan on making sushi, you do specifically wanna buy sushi rice. The reason being, it's got a higher starch content that'll make it naturally stickier as it cooks. As with making any rice, I'm gonna start off by giving it a nice rinse. Normally, I'd do this over the sink, but I'm doing it this way right now so I can demonstrate easier. We're doing this to rinse off all the excess dust and starch from the rice. We want it sticky, but not gummy. Once I've given it a nice first rinse, I'm gonna go ahead and bring it back to the sink, and now we'll just repeat this exact same process twice more or until the water runs clear. This is what your clean rice should look like. The easiest way to make your rice will be with a rice cooker. For this, we'll add in our rice and then cover it with water, along with a piece of kombu. This is a Japanese seaweed that's gonna give our sushi rice a hint of this incredible umami flavor. Before we cook, we're gonna let this rest for 20 minutes, and while we wait, I'll feed my fish. And now that he's happy, here's our soaked rice. We'll cook our rice with the kombu still in there using the sushi rice setting on our rice cooker. While our sushi rice cooks, let's prepare our rice seasoning. In a small pot over low heat, we'll add some rice vinegar, sugar, and a sprinkle of salt. Mix until the salt and sugar are both fully dissolved, and once the liquid is clear, shift it off the heat and immediately add in some kombu. We'll let this sit now until our rice is done while we prepare the rest of our ingredients. When it comes to choosing your fish, pick whatever you like best. Part of what makes sushi so special is that sushi chefs are using special particular cuts from each fillet of fish. So very quickly, in case you ever end up with a huge sushi-grade fillet of fish like this, I'm gonna show you how to cut these nice portions out of it. For this, all we do is find that center line that runs down the center of the fillet and make a nice, clean cut all the way down. The next step is to remove the skin. You can do this part yourself, or usually you can ask the person at the fish shop to do this for you. And now we're left with a nice, clean, beautiful fillet, which we can trim the ends off of, and once you've cleaned that up, it'll look something like this. Here, we have three beautiful cuts, including salmon, hamachi, and tuna, that in just a few moments we'll use to make three different types of sushi. Now we're gonna prepare our vegetables. We'll begin by chopping off both ends, and then using our nori sheet as a guide, we wanna cut pieces of cucumber that are about half the size of it, so right about here. And we're gonna do that exact same thing with the rest of our ingredients, that way they fit well inside the roll. With this piece here, I'll trim it right in half, then flip each piece face down to cut it into quarters. We'll wanna trim out the softer part on the inside so it looks something like this. Then, if you wanna make them really nice and crisp, trim off the edges, and then cut them into two or three pieces each, depending on the size of your cucumber. With that, our cucumber slices are done. So let's move on to our pepper. For this, we'll trim off the top and bottom, then slice right through the middle, and then carefully slice out the middle to get two pieces like this. Then all we do now is slice into even strips, and our pepper is ready too. As for our scallions, we'll trim off the top and bottoms to clean them up, and then we'll cut somewhere in between where the white and the green parts meet, and then we'll line them up evenly like this. Chop these into nice, even, thin rings, and then, if you wanna be really professional, put them in a bowl of ice water, which will give them a better texture. These are just a few examples of how to prep certain vegetables, but you can and should use whatever ones you want. For now, let's clear these off to the side so we can finish our sushi rice and get to making our sushi. This is called a hangiri. It's what you use to make sushi rice, but obviously, I don't expect any of you to have this at home. You can do this with the biggest bowl you have. To finish our sushi rice, we'll remove our kombu and then add it to our bowl or whatever container you're using, and then we'll pour our vinegar mixture over our sushi rice while we wave a spoon or paddle underneath to spread it all out evenly. We'll use that same spoon to cut through the rice and break up any clumps, with the goal being that each grain of rice is gonna get coated in that vinegar mixture. Once you feel your rice has been fully coated, go ahead and spread it out in a nice, even layer, and then wipe down all the sides with a damp kitchen towel. It should look nice and clean like this. If you wanna look like a true sushi chef, go ahead and fan down your rice as well. Since it should still be quite warm at this stage, this'll help to cool it down and make the rice easier to work with in just a few moments. I'm gonna show you how to make three common types of sushi, the first one being nigiri, which we're gonna use this tuna for. To trim your fish for nigiri, start by trimming off the end to get a nice flat face, and then try to get nice, even slices using a clean, consistent motion that runs the entire length of your knife's blade. At the very end of each cut, you also wanna turn that knife blade down to create a ridge on each piece of fish. For our nigiri, we're also gonna prep some wasabi, and believe it or not, most times you thought you were having wasabi, it was probably horseradish, but this is the real deal. To shape the nigiri, wet both hands with some water, grab a little bit of sushi rice, about the size of a large cherry, and then place the rice in your dominant hand and grab the fish with your other hand. That ridge we created earlier should be facing down. Grab a small amount of wasabi, if you even want it, and spread it right into the middle of your fish. Now, place down your rice, create a small little dimple using your thumb to create air within the rice, and then flip the whole thing over, use a combination of these three fingers at once to shape the fish over the rice, and then once you've done that, place your thumb over the top and wrap these fingers around the fish and press just like this. It's almost like when you're trying to catch an egg and to make sure it doesn't break, you step back to catch it. You're doing that same sort of motion with your hand and the nigiri. After this, repeat those same two motions back and forth until you feel you have a nicely shaped nigiri. Moving on, we're gonna make hand rolls using this yellowtail, also known as hamachi. This is basically the sushi equivalent of an ice cream cone. For hand rolls, we're gonna cut our fish in that exact same way, except then we're gonna cut it into nice thin strips like this. Now, we'll take half a seaweed sheet, then once again, grab some rice, but a little bit more this time, and then find the midpoint of your seaweed sheet and place the rice down to the left of that imaginary line. Now, spread that rice out to form a triangle that moves to the lower left corner of your seaweed sheet and then lay down your fish, making sure to get all the way to that bottom corner here in the opposite direction of the way that rice triangle goes. To finish, cover your fish with whatever topping you want and then fold it all the way around into an ice cream cone shape like this, but try not to lose anything inside like I did while you do it. And this is your beautiful hand roll. For our third and final sushi, we'll make maki, the good old classic roll that we all know and love. For this one, we'll use our salmon. I'll use one of my toppings from earlier to measure out a nice slice and then I'll cut this into nice long strips, each of which I'm then gonna cut into smaller strips like this. They're gonna look somewhat like thick cut fish french fries. To make maki, you will need a bamboo roller like this one and you're gonna wanna wrap it up in plastic wrap so it's nonstick. We'll add a half a sheet of seaweed towards the lower part of our roller, then we'll grab a ball of rice, about the size of a clementine, and then starting from the top left of our nori, we'll shape it out in a log like this. Now, using your hand as a guide, begin spreading the rice down the nori. We don't wanna mash the rice when we do this. You wanna be gentle and the goal is to get that rice all the way down with a small little strip of seaweed here at the end. Next, sprinkle on a few sesame seeds, then flip it over and add your fish right in the middle, as well as any additional toppings you want. Then, lift up your bamboo roller, holding all the fillings in place, roll it most of the way over and lift the edge so that you can finish the motion all the way through. To finish, pinch your fingers at the very bottom and place your fingers on top, then slide with even pressure all the way out. And before you cut it, place it on your work surface and then give it one last push on either side to clean it up. To make sure the roll doesn't stick, you should also lightly wet the top of your work surface like this and then place it down to cut. To cut your roll, find the midpoint and then slice, wipe your knife on a damp towel, then stack the rolls, cut through the middle again, wipe your knife and repeat the same thing with both halves. And congratulations, you just made maki. If you wanna get real fancy, you can even add things like salmon eggs on top. Now, this sushi looks perfect, but our next recipe might be the most beautiful dish of them all, a Wagyu Katsu Sando. And as you might expect, it all starts with the beef. I'm using Japanese A5 Wagyu strip loins. These ones here came straight from Japan and you can see how incredible all that marbling is. I mean, just look at my hands. I've barely even held one and all that fat is already starting to melt. Not so important for the recipe, but it's really cool to see that high quality Wagyu always comes with its own certificate. But I'll let you look at this on your own time. As a first step, we'll trim our beef. We wanna trim them into a perfect square and technically, there's no right or wrong answer with how big that square needs to be, just as long as it's as perfect a square as you can possibly cut. Also, if you are lucky enough to get your hands on some Wagyu like this, take a moment to appreciate it. I think it's one of the most beautiful, natural art pieces anywhere in the world. The moment you finish trimming, toss these immediately into the fridge. They need to stay cool. Then take all of your Wagyu fat scraps and toss them into a pot. These all melt down over low heat to toast our bread in later. While our trimmed Wagyu cools, we're gonna make what's called shokupan. It's this fluffy, pillowy Japanese milk bread and it is amazing. And to make it, we combine water, milk, and flour into a pot, then whisk until fully combined and once no lumps remain, turn the heat to low and whisk. Don't stop whisking either. Make sure you're constantly hitting every possible corner of the pan to make sure nothing sits for too long in one place and you'll gradually start to see it thicken up. The second you see streaks forming in the bottom of your pan, move it off the heat and scrape it straight into a bowl. This right here is what'll make our bread really soft. While that cools, we'll continue making our bread dough by adding some bread flour, milk powder, sugar, salt, whole milk, one egg, and melted butter into the bowl of a stand mixer. By now, this should be cool enough that we can add some active dry yeast and give it a good mix to combine. After about five minutes, it should double in size and if you listen carefully, you should hear little pops and crackles. Add this to your mixing bowl along with all the other ingredients, then mix on medium speed for about 15 minutes. Once your dough is soft and squishy, shape it into a nice, tight ball, then fully coat a large bowl with butter, drop it in, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise in a warm spot for one and a half to two hours. Punch this down just to remove some of the extra air, then divide this into three even pieces using a scale if you wanna be extra precise, which I highly recommend when it comes to baking. Then shape each ball into a nice, even rectangle. Fold them all up to create layers, press them all out again back into rectangles, then roll them all up into logs and fit them gently, all laying next to each other, into a buttered Chocopan pan. Once it's fully risen at room temperature, brush the whole thing with milk, but be gentle and don't damage the top of your bread, then slide on the cover and lock it in place. This cover forces the bread to bake into a square instead of rounded at the top. This will go into the oven to bake while we prepare everything else. Next, we're gonna make our tonkatsu sauce, which is basically a really flavorful Japanese steak sauce. Into a medium pot, grate one whole peeled apple, one whole onion, this one will make you cry, but it's worth it for the flavors you're about to experience, then microplane a few cloves of garlic, some fresh peeled ginger, then some soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, brown sugar, some ketchup and Dijon mustard, and Worcestershire sauce. Cook this over medium-low, stirring occasionally until it's thickened up and looks something like this. Transfer to a heat-proof blender and blend until smooth, and once you've pushed it through a strainer, you've got your sauce. Might seem weird to think that you're making some kind of barbecue sauce out of apple, but that sweet and sour balance really works. By now, our bread has finished baking, so it's time for the first moment of truth in this video. Once we've waited about 10 minutes for it to cool, we can flip it over, and voila. What I love so much about milk bread is how soft and springy it is. I'll cut a few even slices now so that the only thing left is to make our beef. What I'm about to make now is called my dredging station. In the first one, regular all-purpose flour. In the second, a few whole eggs, which I'll whisk until fully combined. We don't want any streaks of white or yellow remaining, it should be completely even. And in the third, Japanese panko breadcrumbs. Before I handle the wagyu this time, I'll put two sets of gloves on each hand so it doesn't melt. Just before dredging, I'll season the beef on all sides with salt and only salt so we can preserve the natural flavor of the beef. Now it's time to dredge. First into the flour, getting it completely coated and dusting off any excess. Then into the egg, dripping off any excess there as well. And finally into the panko, the part that gives us that really nice crispy, light crust. Once these have all been fully coated, let them sit for 10 to 15 minutes before frying. When frying, I'll very gradually ease my wagyu into the oil and I'm even going to use not one but two spiders to move it around as it cooks. We wanna be as delicate as possible here. It'll be completely normal for it to not look like a perfect square anymore and that's okay. It's common to trim it to perfection just before eating. I'll fry the others in the exact same way and now that I've gotten comfortable with the oil temperature there, I'm gonna grab this beautiful pot of that rendered wagyu fat from earlier, add a few spoonfuls to a clean pan and then begin toasting one side of my milk bread. While picking up that wagyu fat flavor, we're also gonna get one side of the bread that's beautifully golden brown and has a great crispy texture. My second piece is done, so I'll pull that, hit it with some salt and continue the same process. What I'm doing right now is a perfect representation of one of the things I love about cooking. I like having lots of things going on at once. I'm checking the temperature while trying to cook the perfect steak over here. Then I'm trying to get my bread perfect golden brown, which that looks good. And overall, just moving fast to make sure nothing goes wrong. These are the moments that make me feel like I'm back working in a kitchen. The biggest thing going through my mind right now is that at the end of this video, none of us are gonna be able to agree whether or not it's perfect or it's raw or it's rare. I've always had a dream that one day I could cook a steak so perfect that we could all just agree. But the fact is, I like my steaks medium and most of you probably like yours medium rare. This is it, the big moment we've all been waiting for. I'll paint both toasted sides of our bread with our homemade tonkatsu sauce. Not too much, just enough to give that nice layer of seasoning. Then I'll add on my beef, place on the lid, trim off all the edges. I can already tell it's gonna be good. And then slice it open. My hands are shaking, I'll admit it, because this just might be the biggest moment of truth we've ever had on this channel. Yes, I get more excited to cut these open than I do beef wellingtons. They're beautiful, they're pure luxury, and they're so much fun to make. The coolest thing, watch what happens to the bread when I bite it. It compresses down and becomes beautifully chewy. As for the actual flavor, it's insanely tender. It's almost too juicy. A wagyu katsu sando is perfect for a special occasion. But next up, we're making something you could eat every single day. This is a rich and creamy chicken katsu curry, what many people say is the ultimate Japanese comfort food. And we'll begin by making what I call an elevated stock. That basically means we're taking any old store-bought stock and just waking it up a little bit. And all we have to do is smash down a clove of garlic and then chop up some ginger. And then we'll add that into a pot along with some onion skins and carrot scraps and cover everything with our store-bought chicken stock. Transfer this now to a burner and turn your heat to high. We'll let this first come to a boil and then let it simmer until we actually need it. To make our curry, we'll start by chopping one onion. You'll wanna chop your onions into these half-moon shapes, just like this. And it's good to make sure they're all fully separated because once in a while, you'll get a few areas that might still be attached to the root, which is a really easy fix. You just chop that right off. We're gonna add a bit of oil to a high-sided sauce pot over medium-low heat. And once that oil begins to shimmer, we'll add in those chopped onions. Right away, we'll add a nice sprinkle of salt and then we'll cook these for about 25 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally and using a splash of water as needed to prevent sticking. What we're going for here are these beautiful, soft, and golden jammy onions. They're the kind of onions that'll almost melt away and disappear into a sauce. Once your onions look like this, again, not ultra-dark caramelized, but soft and fall-apart jammy, it's time to strain our stock. Very carefully, pour that off. It should smell completely different from a store-bought chicken stock now. You've got the fragrance from the ginger. You can smell the garlic. Those onion skins give so much flavor and aroma. You could make this just a drink by itself. That's how good this is. But for now, just set this off to the side for a moment while you prep the rest of your vegetables and aromatics for that curry. First, we're gonna peel and grate one apple, preferably a Fuji apple. Many people don't realize that apple is one of the secrets to Japanese curry. It adds this sweetness and body, but also an acidity. And that subtle tartness is what balances everything in the curry out. You won't actually taste the apple in the curry, but you'd miss it if it wasn't there. For some reason, I went through a phase where I would just eat the whole core and all. I don't know why, but I did it for a while. Next, we're gonna grate one tablespoon of fresh ginger as well as a few cloves of garlic. And keep all the juice that you're getting from the apple, the ginger, that's liquid gold in terms of flavor. Next, peel your potato. I always like seeing if I can get the whole thing without ever breaking the peel. It takes a lot of focus. Look at that. Chop your potato first in half, then into somewhat evenly-sized chunks like these. And now, all that's left are our carrots. You'll notice that I'm prepping and peeling all the ingredients that I'm using for this recipe right before I actually cook them, as opposed to going to the grocery store and buying some pre-peeled carrots. And that's because especially when it comes to Japanese cuisine, it's very important that everything is super, super fresh. Once your carrots are peeled, split them carefully down the middle like this, and then cut them into these nice, even sections that are pretty similar in size to those potato chunks. And now, we can get cooking again. To our jammy onions, now over medium heat, we'll add our garlic and ginger paste, and then cook this for about a minute until fragrant. Next, we'll add our grated apple, cubed potato, chopped carrots, and a bay leaf, and stir this up until fully combined. Now, we'll add our Japanese curry powder, coriander, cumin, turmeric, and crushed fenugreek leaves, and then we'll stir to bloom those spices in that oil. Spices have so much flavor locked inside them, but when you heat them in fat, they release that flavor. So even just toasting them for 30 seconds before adding any liquid pulls so much more flavor out of them. Think about it this way. If you skip this step and add that liquid right in, you're leaving about 60% of that flavor behind. It's a big difference. Once your spices have bloomed, add back in all of that elevated stock, then stir, scraping on all the sides and bottom of your pan to make sure you scrape up every last bit of flavor that's been developed, and let this simmer for 20 to 30 minutes. While that simmers, let's make our rice. The fastest way to rinse off rice is to add a bit of water at a time, and then use all the tips of your fingers like this to swirl the rice, and kind of let those grains rub against each other, and I find this way helps you get the starch off much faster than adding tons of water and rinsing it that way. You'll notice this is a short grain Japanese rice, not a long grain rice like basmati or jasmine, because this is the traditional rice used with a Japanese curry. Once that rice is fully rinsed, cook your rice however you want. I'm using a Japanese rice maker because, well, they're awesome. And once I've added my water, I'm also gonna bring in some kombu, this flavorful umami-packed Japanese seaweed, for some extra flavor. And now we'll just let this cook in the background while we move on to what's next. You'll notice now that our curry has thickened up quite a bit. If you taste it, it's also developed lots and lots of flavor. It's getting there, but it's not there yet. First step here is to find and remove that bay leaf. Then set aside a few nice-looking chunks of potato, as well as a couple bits of carrot. These will be used at the very end for plating, where we get a pop of color and some very nice texture. And then we're gonna go in with an immersion blender and blend till nice and smooth, where those potatoes and carrots will help to thicken up our curry base. If you don't have an immersion blender, you can also use a normal blender for this step, but it's a lot easier to just go right in that pot with your immersion blender. Your ultimate goal here is to get it silky smooth, almost like a nice soup consistency. To finish our curry, we'll go into a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat with some butter. And once that's melted down, some flour and whisk to fully combine. We're making what's called a roux, specifically a blonde roux. And what it does is help us thicken up that sauce. Once it begins to smell nutty and becomes lightly golden in color, we'll add some Japanese curry powder and stir for about 30 seconds to let that bloom, making sure to constantly stir in every area so nothing burns. And then we'll carefully add in that curry base we made earlier. Whisk this constantly to combine until the curry has noticeably thickened up. This should really only take a minute or two. And then add in some Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, a little ketchup. Yes, you heard that right. And a little honey. And once again, whisk it all up to combine. We'll let this simmer now for about 10 minutes until it reaches this beautiful, glossy consistency. Now, you probably didn't expect me to mention the word chocolate in this video, but that adding just a little square of dark chocolate can add this richness and slight bitterness that further deepens the flavor. So I'm gonna try it so you don't have to. This is with chocolate. That's gonna be hard to beat. Let's see how it compares to without chocolate. Wow, the one with chocolate is way better, and it's not even close. I just wanna make sure that this isn't some sort of placebo and fluke. I'm gonna add chocolate to this one. I don't know if I agree that it adds such a bitterness that people are talking about, but it adds a depth and a complexity that's kind of an X factor, almost like the apple. It's like you know something's different and you know something's there, but you can't put a finger on what. New spoon. I can't believe that. Definitely add the chocolate. Maybe you won't like it, but I would suggest taking a little bit of your curry off to the side, add a little bit of chocolate. See if you like that. In fact, I've added even more. Okay, that's my curry. With our curry finished, it's time to move on to make our chicken katsu. Simply take a chicken breast and then very carefully place your hand firmly on top and slice right through the center so you can butterfly it open like this, and then cut it in half to get two portions. I've chosen chicken for this recipe because I happen to prefer chicken over pork katsu, but there really is no right or wrong answer. So if you prefer pork, just know that you can follow this exact process, but with pork instead. Once you've cut your chicken into portions, grab a few Ziploc bags and then place one portion of chicken in each bag. You'll understand why in just a moment. For this step, grab a small pot or a meat tenderizer and then take out any anger you might have by pounding that chicken until it's nice and even all the way across. Doing this inside a bag keeps everything clean and stops the chicken from tearing. You'll wanna get it about a half an inch thick. Just to show you that a pot works just as well, watch. You can get away with using all kinds of tools in the kitchen for different tasks, and this one works perfectly. This is just like how I end up rolling my pasta every time with a big bottle of olive oil instead of a rolling pin. If you really wanna get that restaurant-level detail, which I'm gonna do, you can bring back in that board and cut your chicken into nice, perfect oval shapes. But again, this step is not absolutely necessary, but feel free to do it if you have the time. With our chicken all prepped, it's time to bread it and fry. While our oil heats up, we'll season our chicken on both sides with salt and white pepper. I always get so hungry while I'm making these videos, especially when it's something like raw chicken that I can't snack on while we cook. Make sure to get that nice, even dusting on both sides. And then it's time to dredge. First, into some potato starch, which we're using instead of all-purpose flour to get a thinner, crispier layer that stays crunchier for longer. Then into some egg, and finally into some Japanese panko breadcrumbs. Wow, how beautiful is that? All we do now is set this off to the side on a wire rack, and then just repeat. I forgot to say this before, but make sure you shake off that excess, especially with the potato starch. This is really just for an inner coating to protect the chicken from getting soggy with all that sauce. You know, I pride myself on making everything homemade in these videos, but if you really wanna go extra crazy, I would challenge one of you to make your own breadcrumbs. That would be cool. Once all your chicken is breaded, let it rest there for 15 minutes before you fry. You know I never like to make you wait, so we're ready to go. Remember, always lay it away from you. As I fry, I'm gonna lightly baste my chicken with oil to make sure it's constantly getting hit in every spot all at the same time, and I'm also gonna flip it over very carefully every 30 seconds or so, just to make sure it's cooking evenly. Because the chicken's thin, this should only really need to cook about seven or eight minutes, depending on your oil temperature, and I have a little trick if the oil gets too hot too fast and you wanna cool it down. Simply just add a bit of cold oil, and then check that oil temperature again, just to make sure you hover right in the sweet spot that we're looking for. To be clear, the easiest way to control your temperature is to just turn up and down your heat, but if you need to cool it down fast in an emergency, that trick can come in handy. It's looking good. Once your chicken is golden brown and crispy, but more importantly, fully cooked, place it off to the side and immediately hit it with some salt so that salt can stick to the oil. Now, simply follow that same process with the rest of your chicken. Remember, be delicate when you fry this chicken. Those crispy panko breadcrumbs are a trademark part of any katsu. You don't wanna break them and crush them, so be careful. I'm getting impatient now, so I'm gonna cook the last two at the same time. Now, those are beautiful. I know you know how to cut chicken, but with this, you don't wanna cut back and forth like you normally might. You wanna cut straight down. Here's the cross section of our chicken, and look at how juicy that is. Now for plating. Add your rice to one side of the plate, shape it just a bit to create this wall that'll hold the curry on the other side, then carefully pour on that curry, and then on goes our chicken. To finish, add a few of those carrot and potato chunks, however many you want, as well as a light sprinkle of chopped parsley. Look at that, the perfect bite. Last but not least, we're attempting an omelet you've probably seen all over the internet. It's the famous omurice, and it all comes down to mastering one incredibly tricky technique that leads to a beautifully satisfying finish. But first, there are three parts to omurice. The rice, the egg, and the sauce. And we're gonna start by quickly making our sauce, also known as demi-glace. We'll turn the heat to medium and add some neutral oil, along with our chopped shallots and green onions. This sauce, as well as the rice we'll make in just a moment, are both very important in this dish because there's no seasoning in the egg. So this is our chance to really build that flavor. Once the onions start to get some color and nice caramelization, we'll add our carrots, celery, and garlic, and after about a minute more of stirring, in goes our tomato paste, which we need to caramelize to develop that deep umami flavor. Deglaze with some red wine, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot to make sure you capture all that flavor. And once that's reduced down to a glaze, add in your beef stock. I'll move this off to the side to reduce and thicken. And now we'll make our roux. The roux is a simple mixture of butter and flour that'll help to thicken our sauce and give it a nice silky consistency. We're specifically making a golden roux. We just keep stirring this until we get a golden color, which, in addition to thickening our sauce, will give flavor. It almost smells like cookies. Once our demi-glace is reduced down by about half, we'll strain it directly into our golden roux and whisk over medium-low until it becomes smooth and starts to thicken up. Once you get to a place where it looks something like this, make any final seasoning adjustments, turn off the heat, and set it aside. With our sauce done, the second component is a fried rice. Into a wok over high heat, we'll add some oil. And once it begins to smoke, I'll toss in some chopped chicken thighs and stir until we get some golden color. Then I'll add in some chopped mushrooms and onion and stir until the onions become translucent. And then push all those ingredients off to one side. And once the pan has a chance to get nice and hot, add in some ketchup and stir to caramelize. Ketchup may not sound right, but it's authentic. If you leave it raw, it's sharp and sweet, whereas caramelized ketchup develops a deep, tangy, and umami flavor. To finish, we'll add some Worcestershire sauce and then crumple in some day-old rice. Day-old rice is important because it's dry enough that all the grains will hold their individual shape. And once fully combined, turn off the heat, add in a little bit of fresh parsley, and finish with just a few cubes of butter to make it nice and glossy. Between this and the sauce we made earlier, we now have all the flavor we'd ever need. And now we just need the texture. So the final step is the omelet. Everything with omurice happens in about 90 seconds, but I'm gonna slow it down and explain to you where everything goes wrong. And then you just might have a shot at being able to actually make it. First, you must fully beat your eggs. If you leave any streaks in there, it basically increases the chance that there are weak points in your omelet, which increases the chances that it splits apart. Next, strain the eggs. This is how we get them super smooth and silky, and do not season them with anything. Even salt will mess with the texture and ruin your omurice. Now, cover this with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge overnight to let the eggs relax. Before cooking the omurice, we wanna have our rice and sauce ready to go. As I'm sure you might've seen, the second you finish making the omelet, you lay it carefully over the rice. And to get that nice shot where you cut it open, you need to cut quickly. Once we've packed our rice into the mold and set it on the plate, and our sauce is warming up off to the side, we can begin making our omelet. As you can see, I'm using this special omurice pan, but you can also make it with a normal pan at home. Now, the first thing we have to nail is the temperature. If it's too hot, the egg will scramble or burn. You won't get that silky texture. But if it's too cold, it'll stick to the pan too easily. When in doubt, go on the cooler side than the hotter side. Once you put a streak of egg and it sizzles up like this, you've got your temp right. Egg in immediately. I'm whisking fast and scraping down the edges of my pan. We wanna break it up into tons and tons of tiny little curds. And then once it almost looks a little bit like jelly, I'll move it off the heat. Tap down hard a couple times to let it settle. And now I'll trade my chopsticks for a rubber spatula. And using that rubber spatula, I'll begin folding from the side closest to me. Once it gets close to the front, I'll lay this flat again, then scrape the side away from me. And the goal here is to have the two edges meet to create a seam. And in one confident motion, that's the part that's tricky. With a proper omurice, you end up with sort of an oval football type shape. Now we just wanna press down and seal the corners. If you ever find a spot that looks like it's gonna split open, you can always move it back over the heat like this. And before we lay it on our rice, we'll flip it over once more. We wanna see the seam side up, then move immediately over to your rice. And using some kind of guide, I like to use my hand, slide it ever so carefully right over the top of your rice. This is a balancing act. Then cut in with your knife on one side and go from one end to the other. It should flap open like this, then top it off with sauce and freshly chopped chives and dig in. By the way, if any of you were actually able to pull this off at home, I am incredibly impressed. So much more umami than I thought there would be. The egg is pure texture, not that much flavor in the egg. The flavor comes from the sauce and the rice. It's funny because I always thought it was one of those dishes that looked so much better than it probably tasted, but I think that bite just changed my mind. You just learned how to cook all the most popular Japanese dishes. But which is your favorite? Comment below.