Katsu Sando
Quintessential Japanese comfort food; simple and delicious. To be honest, this is one of the dishes that I'd rarely make since it's a bit of a hassle to make and relatively easy to find at restaurants / fairly affordable. But it's pretty satisfying to make.
Active Time: 30 min
Total Time: 30 min
Ingredients
> Japanese milk bread
> (optional) butter
> pork chops
> salt, flour, egg, panko breadcrumbs
> oil
> tonkatsu sauce
> (optional) kewpie mayonnaise
> sesame seeds (1 tbsp), kewpie mayonnaise (1 tbsp), rice wine vinegar (1 tsp), Dijon mustard (2 tsp), soy sauce (1 tsp), sesame oil (1/2 tsp), sugar (1/2 tsp)
> cabbage
Instructions
1. Prepare dressing for cabbage. Toast 1 tbsp sesame seeds in a small pan. Transfer to a mortar / pestle and grind until the seeds are coarsely ground. Transfer to a bowl and whisk in mayonnaise, rice wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar.
2. Prepare the cabbage. Thinly slice the cabbage, make sure it is dry, add the dressing and mix well.
3. Slice the milk bread into relatively thick slices and toast well (optionally drizzling some melted butter), until golden brown on both sides.
4. Season the pork chops, and pound them until approximately 1cm thick. Depending on the size of the pork chops, you may want to halve them before doing this step.
5. Fry the pork chops using the standard flour / egg / panko into oil pipeline. Cook until fully cooked, then remove and let drain on a paper towel.
6. Assemble the sandwiches! Prepare two slices of bread. Spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on both slices. Top with a pork cutlet, drizzle with tonkatsu sauce, and place a handful of cabbage on top. Top with the other bread slice. Trim edges if desired, and slice in half. Serve and enjoy!
Notes/Tips:
> Some recipes will recommend toasting both sides of the milk bread slices in butter. I personally found this to make it a little bit too heavy. I would consider toasting it with one side drizzled with a bit of melted butter.
> Probably the easiest way to prepare the cabbage is to run it through a mandolin.
> According to a lot of recipes, the key to getting good katsu sandwiches is to use fresh panko breadcrumbs (i.e. not dried). You typically won't find this in supermarkets because it isn't very shelf stable, but you can easily make this yourself by running some milk bread in the food processor (especially since you already need milk bread for the rest of the sandwich anyways). It supposedly makes the end result lighter, crispier, less "hard", and prevents the pork from overcooking better.
> This recipe is for a pork katsu sando, but you'd pretty much use the same process for a chicken katsu sandwich. I think chicken katsu might actually work better in many cases. The only difference is that you may need to do a bit more work to shape the chicken properly. For a chicken sando, you could also consider marinading the chicken instead of seasoning it on the spot.