is a popular Japanese food, a bowl of rice topped with a fried

tonkatsu is a Japanese dish that consists of a breaded, Deep frying, deep-fried pork cutlet. It involves coating slices of pork with Bread crumbs#Panko, panko (bread crumbs), and then frying them in oil. The two main types are fillet and loin. Tonkatsu ...

pork cutlet,

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the ...

vegetables Vegetables are edible parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. This original meaning is still commonly used, and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including flowers, fruits, ...

, and

condiments A condiment is a preparation that is added to food, typically after cooking, to enhance the flavour, to complement the dish or to impart a specific flavor. Such specific flavors generally add sweetness or pungency, or sharp or piquant flavors. ...

. The dish's name is a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of the Japanese words ''

'' (pork cutlet) and ''

donburi is a Japanese "rice-bowl dish" consisting of fish, meat, vegetables or other ingredients simmered together and served over rice. ''Donburi'' meals are usually served in oversized rice bowls which are also called ''donburi''. If one needs to ...

'' (rice bowl).

Preparation

The

for the katsudon dish is prepared by dipping the cutlet in flour, followed by egg, then dipping in

panko Breadcrumbs are a culinary ingredient consisting of flour or crumbled bread of varying dryness, sometimes with seasonings added. They are used for a variety of purposes, including breading or crumbing foods before frying (such as breaded cut ...

breadcrumbs, and deep-frying. Next, into a boiling broth of

dashi is a family of stocks used in Japanese cuisine. ''Dashi'' forms the base for miso soup, clear broth soup, noodle broth soup, and many simmering liquids to accentuate the savory flavor known as umami. ''Dashi'' is also mixed into the flour b ...

soy sauce Soy sauce (sometimes called soya sauce in British English) is a liquid condiment of China, Chinese origin, traditionally made from a fermentation (food), fermented paste of soybeans, roasted cereal, grain, brine, and ''Aspergillus oryzae'' or ''A ...

and

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' , from Latin ), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion which was classifie ...

s, the sliced tonkatsu and a beaten egg is cooked. * The PDF text misses the egg-dipping step before breading the meat. The video does demonstrate it. * video
Tonkatsu & Katsudon recipe
* web page linking to the video and PDF
Experience Japanese Home Cooking

Variants

Other bowls, made of cutlet and rice but without eggs or stock, may also be called ''katsudon''. Such dishes include: * ''sōsu katsudon'' (sauce katsudon): with tonkatsu sauce or

Worcestershire sauce Worcestershire sauce or Worcester sauce (UK: ) is a fermented liquid condiment invented by pharmacists John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins in the city of Worcester in Worcestershire, England, during the first half of the 19th century ...

, from regions such as Fukui,

Kōfu is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 187,985 in 90,924 households, and a population density of 880 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Overview Toponymy Kōfu ...

Gunma is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Gunma Prefecture has a population of 1,937,626 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of . Gunma Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture and Fukushima Prefecture to t ...

Aizuwakamatsu is a city in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 118,159 in 50,365 households, and a population density of 310 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . History The area of present-day Aizuwakamatsu ...

and Komagane * ''demi katsudon'' or ''domi katsudon'': with

demi-glace Demi-glace (, 'half glaze') is a rich brown sauce in French cuisine used by itself or as a base for other sauces. The term comes from the French word ''glace'', which, when used in reference to a sauce, means "icing" or "glaze." It is traditi ...

and often green peas, a specialty of

Okayama is the prefectural capital, capital Cities of Japan, city of Okayama Prefecture in the Chūgoku region of Japan. The Okayama metropolitan area, centered around the city, has the largest urban employment zone in the Chugoku region of western J ...

* ''shōyu-dare katsudon'': with

-based

tare sauce is a general term in Japanese cuisine for dipping sauces often used in grilling (''yakitori'' and ''yakiniku'', especially as ''teriyaki'' sauce) as well as with ''sushi'', ''nabemono'', and ''gyoza''. It can also be used to make the soup for ...

, Niigata-style * ''misokatsu-don'': '

with a sauce made with hatchō miso on rice, a favorite in

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is the list of cities in Japan, fourth-most populous city in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020, and the principal city of the Chūkyō metropolitan area, which is the List of ...

File:とんから亭のかつ丼！ - 2.jpg, With egg and onion Fukui sause katsudon.jpg, Marinated in

File:かつや味噌カツ丼と豚汁.jpg, With tonkatsu sauce and '' tonjiru'' TareKatsudon Matsuriya.jpg, Shōyu-dare katsudon,

flavor If pork is substituted with beef, it will be '' gyū-katsu-don''. A variation made with

chicken katsu , also known as panko chicken or tori katsu (鶏カツ) is a Japanese cuisine, Japanese dish of fried chicken made with panko, panko bread crumbs. It is related to tonkatsu, fried pork cutlets. The dish has spread internationally and has become ...

and egg is called ''oyako katsudon'', which is distinguished from '' oyakodon'' where the meat in the latter is not fried.

In culture

It has become a modern tradition for Japanese students to eat katsudon the night before taking a major test or school entrance exam. This is because "katsu" is a

homophone A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning or in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, a ...

of the verb , meaning "to win" or "to be victorious". It is also a

trope Trope or tropes may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Trope (cinema), a cinematic convention for conveying a concept * Trope (literature), a figure of speech or common literary device * Trope (music), any of a variety of different things in medi ...

in Japanese police films: that suspects will speak the truth with tears when they have eaten katsudon and are asked, "Did you ever think about how your mother feels about this?" Even nowadays, the gag of "We must eat katsudon while

interrogating Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful info ...

" is popular in Japanese films. However, , police will never actually feed suspects during interrogation.

References

External links

{{Rice dishes Donburi Japanese meat dishes Japanese rice dishes

Preparation

Variants

In culture

See also

References

External links