katsu don (pork or chicken cutlet with egg on rice)

In our house, we have many 'one-dish wonders.' It's called one-dish wonders because the whole meal is in one dish. Donburi (in Japanese, it means rice bowl with different toppings) is one of those. It's simple to make and the best thing is, you have fewer dishes to wash! I usually serve donburi dish with miso soup or simple salad, just to make sure we get some greens. :)

Ingredients

[Katsu]

Pork (4 slices for cutlet or you can cut the whole chunk of pork loin into 0.5cm (about 0.2 inch)
OR
Chicken (2 breast, cut in half horizontally, so you'll end up with four breasts)

Egg - 1
Flour -1/4 cup
Bread crumbs (Panko) - 1 cup

Oil for frying (see TIPS)

[Egg]

Onion (sliced) - 1/2
Eggs - 5

Milk - 1/4 cup (can sub for dashi water 1/4cup, or just 1/4 cup plain water)
Soy sauce - 1/2 TBS

[Other ingredients - optional]

Tonkatsu sauce (veggies and fruit sauce, can find in Asian market. also called Bulldog sauce)
Thai chili sauce
Japanese mayonnaise (Kewpie brand can be found in most Asian market)

Prep:

1. Sprinkle some salt and pepper on your choice of meat. Let it sit for 5 minutes while you prepare other ingredients.
2. Put flour, egg (beat the egg) and bread crumbs in separate shallow bowls.
3. To make katsu, coat the meat with flour, then dip in egg mixture, and finally roll in bread crumbs. 
4. Slice onion. 
5. Beat 5 eggs and add either milk or water. Mix lightly (don't over mix). Add pinch of salt, dash of white pepper and 1/2 TBS soy sauce. Mix and set it aside.

 

Cook:

1. Heat the pan/pot and add oil (up to 0.5inch)
2. Fry the pork/chicken until golden brown (see TIPS). Take it out on a paper towel-ed plate. Cut each cutlet into 5 slices vertically.
3. On a separate frying pan, fry onion in oil or butter (1 TBS). Fry until onion starts to turn brown (but don't burn it).
4. Add 5 beaten eggs all at once into the frying pan.  Mix with chopstick (like if you are making scrambled eggs), but only few times. We don't want scrambled eggs, but the mixture makes the eggs fluffy. 

1. Before the eggs are cooked completely, add in the fried & cut cutlets into the pan (on top of the eggs). Let it cook for 1 minutes or so.

 

Serve:

1. In a donburi bowl (any bowl that's 5-7 inches in diameter and 3-4 inches in depth), put desired amount of rice.
2. Put the egg & cutlet on top of the rice. 
3. Drizzle your favorite sauce. Tonkatsu sauce & mayonnaise go well with this dish. But some people (like my husband) like to put Thai chili sauce. 

 

TIPS

• When making deep fried food at home, you don't have to heat a pot full of oil. Just use enough oil to cover the half of the food you're deep frying and flip it when one side is done. It works for most of the deep fried food.
• You can prepare the cutlet few hours earlier or a day before. Store in the fridge until it's ready to be deep fried.
• When making katsu (fried cutlet)
• Test if the oil is ready by sprinkle a pinch of bread crumbs in and see it floats up (with bubbles) right away. Then it's ready. If it's not ready, the crumbs will sink to the bottom and soak up all the oil.
• You don't have to flip the meat multiple times. Just fry one side for about 3 minutes and turn and do the same. The color should be like... THIS COLOR