Tonkatsu Curry Recipe (カツカレー Katsu Curry)

Today I'm going to show you a relatively quick way to make katsu curry without using those instant curry roux blocks, so stick around. With an ultra crispy pork cutlet blanketed in thick savory Japanese curry, katsu curry is one of my favorite Japanese comfort foods. The name literally means cutlet curry in Japanese, and it's a mashup of tonkatsu with Japanese curry. I've posted separate recipes for tonkatsu and Japanese curry rice before, but both take a bit of time to make, so I wanted to see if I could find a way to speed the whole process up. It requires a few kitchen hacks and some multitasking, but I've managed to cut the time required down from 3 hours to about 30 minutes. Sound good? Let's have a look at our ingredients. For our curry sauce, I've got 1 1⁄2 cups of low-sodium chicken broth, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of chuno sauce, 1 tablespoon of honey, and 2 teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa powder. We're also gonna need 3 cloves of garlic and an equal amount of ginger, 1 medium onion, 1 small carrot, 1⁄4 teaspoon of baking soda, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, and 14 grams of Japanese curry powder. I'll include a link to the recipe in the description below. Finally, for the tonkatsu, I'm using 325 grams of boneless pork rib chops, salt and pepper, 2 tablespoons of flour, an egg, and 1 cup of panko. For the curry, I'm gonna start by adding the soy sauce, chuno sauce, honey, and cocoa powder to the chicken stock, and stir this all together. It may be weird smelling chocolate right now, but don't worry, your curry isn't gonna taste like chocolate, and this hack gives it a depth of flavor that makes it taste like it's been simmered for hours. Once the honey has dissolved, let's move on to the aromatics. I'm gonna start by grating the garlic and ginger directly into the frying pan. The key to great Japanese curry is in caramelizing the aromatics, and by grating them you can reduce the time required from 1 hour down to about 8 minutes. Next, I'm gonna grate in the onions and carrots. These are gonna provide a wonderful natural sweetness to our curry sauce, and it's how we get it nice and thick without making a roux. For the tonkatsu, I'm gonna break the egg into a shallow tray and beat it until it's uniform in color, and I'm also gonna add the panko to a second tray. To prep the pork, I'm gonna cut some shallow slits into the meat spaced about a quarter inch apart. This process is called sujigiri in Japanese, and it tenderizes the meat by cutting through tough connective tissue, and it also prevents our katsu from curling when we fry it. Now you wanna flip them over and repeat this on the other side, making cuts at the same angle. This ensures you don't accidentally cut all the way through the meat, because the slits on each side are running perpendicular to each other. Next, I'm gonna cover a chop with plastic wrap, and I'm gonna use a mallet to pound it out until it's about double its original size. The plastic wrap is optional, but it keeps things tidy, and if you don't have a mallet, any heavy object like a pot or rolling pin will work. I normally prefer tonkatsu to be thick cut, but for katsu curry, I pound it out for two reasons. The first is that a thinner cutlet cooks through much faster, and the second reason is that I like having a higher panko to meat ratio for this dish, so the curry has more surface area to cling to. Okay, these are looking good, so I'm gonna go ahead and lightly season these on both sides with salt and pepper. Then I'm gonna dust them with flour. Along with the egg in the next step, this is gonna act as a glue that holds the panko onto the meat, so it's important you don't miss any spots. You also wanna dust off any excess flour. Okay, let's get this into the egg, and I'm gonna flip it over a few times to ensure there are no dry spots. Now I'm gonna move this over to the panko and switch hands to give it a good coating of breadcrumbs. I usually scoop some onto the top and then pat it down gently before flipping it over and repeating. Be sure to focus on the areas that are looking a little bald. Once you're satisfied with the coating, move it over to another tray and repeat the process with the other cutlet. Okay, our prep's done, so let's start on our curry sauce. I'm gonna put the pan with our aromatics over high heat and bring the mixture to a boil. Then I'm gonna add the baking soda and stir that in. The baking soda raises the pH of the mixture, which physically breaks down the vegetables while also speeding up the browning reactions. This is how we're able to get the flavor of fully caramelized aromatics in a matter of minutes. Once most of the water is evaporated, turn down the heat to medium and add the vegetable oil. Now we're gonna fry this until the mixture forms a golden brown paste. This should take about another three minutes. By the way, this curry sauce takes about 12 minutes to cook and the tonkatsu takes about five minutes per cutlet to fry. I'm doing these separately for clarity's sake, but if you feel like multitasking, you can fry the katsu while you make the sauce and they should end up finishing about the same time. Once your aromatics look like this, you want to add the curry powder and toast it very briefly. Work quickly and be careful because the curry powder will burn easily and it can make your curry taste bitter. Now I'm gonna dump the chicken stock mixture into the pan and I'm gonna cook this until the sauce is nice and thick. Okay, let's turn the heat down to low and start cooking our katsu. Before we fry up our tonkatsu, I want to send a big shout out to all my supporters. I wouldn't be able to spend the time to develop these recipes without you, so seriously, thank you. If you're learning something new from my recipes, there are lots of ways to help, including ones that don't involve money, so hit the link in the description down below to see what you can do. I've got a pot with an inch of oil preheated to 340 degrees Fahrenheit or 170 degrees Celsius and I'm gonna fry the katsu one at a time. You can do both at the same time, but you're gonna need a much larger pot and you're also gonna end up using a lot more oil. Let this fry undisturbed until the coating is set and it's just starting to brown around the edges. This took about a minute and a half. Then you want to flip it over and brown the other side. By the way, we're frying this at a higher temperature than I normally use for tonkatsu because we have a thin cutlet and I want to get good browning on the crust without overcooking the meat. Okay, it's been about two and a half minutes on this side and this is looking almost ready, but I'm gonna go ahead and flip it over one more time to get it just a little more brown. This katsu has been frying for a total of five minutes now and it's looking perfect, so let's get it out of the oil and onto a paper towel lined rack to drain. I've still got another cutlet to fry, but let's go ahead and plate this one up. The first thing I'm gonna do is slice the tonkatsu. Just listen to how crispy that is. Now I'm gonna set this over a bed of rice and then I'm gonna pour our curry sauce over half of the katsu. By doing it this way, you still get plenty of crispy crust while the lower half gets draped in the luscious curry. Okay, let's add some fukushinzuke to finish this off and our katsu curry is done. Oh man, this looks so crispy and delicious and that curry smells incredible. All right, let's try this out. Itadakimasu! I'm gonna go right for the center. Listen to that. Can you hear that? It's ultra crispy on the outside and it's juicy in the center and that curry sauce is so rich and flavorful you'd never know it only took 15 minutes to make. You know, I love tonkatsu, but I've never really thought it goes too well with rice. This is the beauty of this dish is you've got the curry sauce here so you can go in with a little rice, a little katsu, a little curry. That's so good. If you're not into pork, you can also make katsu with chicken or tofu and the curry sauce can be made plant-based using vegetable or mushroom stock. So I hope you'll give this a try. As always, let me know you enjoyed this video by giving this a big thumbs up and don't forget to share this with all your friends that would love a good katsu curry. All right, I'm gonna go sit down and enjoy the rest of this, but be sure to check out this playlist for more delicious Japanese comfort food, and I'll catch you in the next one.