Chicken katsu

What it is

Chicken katsu is a boneless chicken cutlet, pounded a little thin, coated in flour, egg, and panko breadcrumbs, then fried until the crust is crisp and golden. You slice it crosswise into strips and eat it over rice with katsu sauce, a thick, tangy, slightly sweet brown sauce. On a plate lunch it comes with two scoops of rice and a scoop of mac salad.

A short history

Katsu comes from Japan. In the late 1800s, cooks there put their own spin on the Western breaded cutlet and called it katsuretsu, from the English word cutlet, which got shortened to katsu. Pork katsu, tonkatsu, came first, and chicken followed. Japanese immigrants brought the technique to Hawaii's plantations, and chicken katsu settled in as a plate lunch regular. The katsu sauce is a cousin of tonkatsu sauce, thick and fruity like a mellow Worcestershire.

How to make it at home

Panko is the key. It is the light, flaky Japanese breadcrumb that fries up crunchier than regular crumbs. Do not skip pounding the chicken, even thickness means it cooks evenly.

Frying it so the crust stays crisp

Katsu lives or dies on the crust. A soggy one is still edible, but it is not what you were after.

Oil temperature matters more than anything else. You want it around 340 to 350F. Too cool and the panko drinks oil and goes limp. Too hot and the crust browns before the chicken cooks. If you do not have a thermometer, drop in a few panko crumbs. They should sizzle steadily and float up, not sit there quietly and not go wild.

Press the panko on firmly. Lay the cutlet in the crumbs, pile more on top, and press with your palm. Loose panko falls off in the oil and burns.

Fry in batches. Two cutlets at a time in a normal pan. Every piece you add drops the oil temperature, and a crowded pan never recovers.

Drain standing up, not lying down. A wire rack is best, but leaning the cutlets against the side of a bowl works. Flat on a paper towel means the underside steams itself soft in its own heat.

Slice it crosswise into strips before serving. That is how it comes on a plate lunch, and it makes it easy to eat with chopsticks or a fork without sawing.

Beyond the plate lunch

Once you can fry a cutlet, a few other dishes open up, and they are all worth knowing.

Katsu curry is the big one. Japanese curry over rice with a sliced cutlet laid on top. The curry roux blocks from the Asian market are genuinely good and take about fifteen minutes.

Katsu don puts the cutlet in a pan with onion, dashi, shoyu, and a beaten egg, simmered just until the egg sets, then slid over rice. It is a good use for a cutlet that has gone a little soft.

A katsu sandwich, katsu sando, is the cutlet with sauce and shredded cabbage between two slices of soft white bread with the crusts cut off. Cold, out of a bento, it is excellent.

Chicken katsu also turns up as the protein on a loco moco in place of the hamburger patty, gravy and egg and all.

Questions I get

Thigh or breast?

Either. Breast is the classic cut for chicken katsu and slices neat. Thigh is more forgiving and stays juicier if you are nervous about overcooking. I use thigh on a weeknight.

Can I bake or air fry it?

You can, and it will be decent, not the same. Toast the panko in a dry pan with a little oil until golden before you bread the chicken. Panko does not brown properly with only dry oven heat, so pre-toasting is the difference between pale and crisp.

Can I make it ahead?

Bread the cutlets and keep them on a rack in the fridge for a few hours before frying. That actually helps the coating stick. Fried katsu is best within the hour, though it reheats reasonably in a hot oven on a rack.

Do I have to make the sauce?

No. Bottled tonkatsu sauce, Bulldog brand is the common one, is what plenty of families use. The quick version in the recipe is ketchup, shoyu, Worcestershire, and sugar, and it takes a minute.

What oil should I fry in?

Anything neutral with a high smoke point. Canola, vegetable, peanut, or rice bran oil all work. Skip olive oil, it smokes too low and the flavor fights the dish. You need about an inch in the pan, which is shallow frying, not deep frying, so one bottle goes a long way.

What about the shredded cabbage?

In Japan a mound of finely shredded raw cabbage comes with tonkatsu as a matter of course, and it is genuinely good with it, cold and crunchy against the fried cutlet. On a Hawaii plate lunch it usually gets replaced by mac salad. Do both if you want.

Want more? Here is how I make spam musubi, or the rest of the Hawaiian favorites.