- 11 minutes ago
Here's how to make katsu sand by Tim Anderson, MasterChef winner.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi everybody, I'm Tim Anderson. I'm the executive chef and owner of Nanban and
00:05author of Nanban the Cookbook. It's a restaurant in Brixton. We do what's
00:09called Japanese soul food and today we're gonna make a Japanese soul food
00:13classic katsu sando, tonkatsu sandwiches.
00:21So a katsu sando has to have a lot of texture. It's obviously got the crispy
00:26juicy breaded pork and the lovely soft white bread but then I always like to
00:30have a lot of fresh crunch from cabbage. So this is a hispy or sweetheart cabbage.
00:36If you can get the flat round cabbage you sometimes see in Asian supermarkets
00:39that's even better but this is really good really sweet. We want to slice this
00:44as thinly as you can. If you got a mandolin at home you can use that otherwise
00:49just a nice sharp knife. If you're really lazy or you have to prepare a lot of
00:55katsu sando's you can also run this through a food processor with a slicing
00:59attachment. And actually you can use kind of whatever cabbage you like. I like his
01:03because it's so sweet and fresh. Red cabbage is fine too. Not traditional but
01:07really nice, really peppery. Alright that's our cabbage done. Alright so we've
01:14got our cabbage sliced up ready to go. Now obviously we have to turn to the pork
01:19itself. So there's a lot of different cuts actually that work for this but I
01:22really like loin. It's a really sort of good balance of fat and lean meat. It's
01:27tender enough that you can bite right through it in the sandwich and it's a
01:30perfect size as well. It fits within slices of bread just about perfectly. Now
01:34ordinarily when I'm making tonkatsu I like a nice big thick pork chop because
01:38that way it stays a bit pink and juicy in the middle actually. But with a sandwich
01:42you want to get something a little bit thinner. Now if you've ever made schnitzel
01:44before they always tell you to bash out the pork make it really really thin or if
01:48it's chicken to butterfly and then bash it out. But I think that almost always just
01:52results in overcooked dry pork. I never understood why they do that. So these are
01:56about right. These are just over sort of a centimeter and a half thick which is
02:01thick enough that they'll be easy to cook through but not so thin that they will
02:05dry out. So these are perfect. Now we're gonna season these well with salt
02:16and white pepper
02:20and also this. This is meat tenderizer powder. Obviously because you want to be
02:25able to bite through the pork in the sandwich you don't want to have to chew
02:29or struggle with it at all. It has to be as tender as possible. I tried different
02:32marinades to achieve this but what I didn't like is that the marinades tended to
02:36impart too much flavor. I really just wanted this to taste like pork. So a friend of
02:39mine recommended this. It's it's derived from papaya has an enzyme in it called
02:43papayin which is the same thing you get in kiwi fruit or pineapple which
02:46sometimes makes your tongue go tingly. That's actually the tenderizer effect
02:50happening on your tongue. So it actually starts to break down the meat and it
02:55works really really well. It's very effective and doesn't impart any other
02:57flavor. You should use it very sparingly because actually if you use too much it
03:02can make the meat kind of mushy kind of too soft actually. We'll just sprinkle
03:07that on like you would salt on both sides.
03:16Okay so these are nice and seasoned. We want to put these in the fridge for
03:20about an hour for that tenderizer to work its magic on these. All right so we've
03:26got our pork which has been in the fridge tenderizing for about an hour and now
03:30we're going to move on to the next step which is to pane to bread crumb the
03:33tonkatsu. So tonkatsu sandwiches, katsu sandow, they're always delicious because
03:37it's deep fried pork in a sandwich so what's not to like but there are a few
03:41tricks, few little things you can do to make it amazing and not just really good.
03:45Obviously the meat tenderizer powder is one of those little tricks. Good quality
03:49pork is important as well but then how you bread crumb and a few things that go
03:52into that is also going to make a really amazing katsu sandow. So we're going to
03:57move on to that now. I'm going to start by beating a couple of eggs and to these
04:09we're going to add a little bit of vegetable oil. The oil is obviously water
04:17impermeable so when you mix this into the eggs it creates a kind of barrier
04:21around the pork. It kind of seals in the water and the juice from the pork itself.
04:26It won't evaporate off as much which does two things. First it keeps the meat
04:29juicier and secondly it keeps the water from seeping out into the bread crumb
04:32after it's cooked so the bread crumb itself stays crunchier.
04:44All right nice and smooth. Then what you need is some flour. So I found for some
04:51reason that it is a food science question that's beyond me. Strong white bread flour
04:57works best in a katsu sandu. It is a better adhesive somehow and also I feel
05:02like it helps with the crunch a bit. Something about the gluten in it. And then
05:05finally we have panko. Panko bread crumbs. Japanese style bread crumbs. More
05:10like shavings of bread than actual bits of bread. And we just do egg, flour, bread
05:17crumbs. When you're panning also it's a good idea to have one wet hand which you're
05:27using to deal with the eggs and then one dry. So nice and well coated into the flour. Back into
05:38the egg again.
05:44And that double dipping in the egg forms a really nice kind of glue.
05:52All right so I'm just gonna pat that in. As you're putting the panko on the
05:58chops you can actually kind of press it down and flatten it out a bit. Make it
06:03nice and wide so it fills the bread when we make the sandwiches.
06:10All right so that's all pan-aid. They already look good actually. And you can
06:13make these ahead of time by the way. These will be fine in the fridge for up to a
06:16day actually. So you can make them the day before and then all you have to do is
06:19drop them in oil to fry them. So what we're gonna do next. Okay so we've got our
06:22lovely pork chops all coated in crunchy panko. Now it's time to deep fry. So safety
06:27first with deep frying you want to use a big pot where the sides come up several
06:32inches above the surface of the oil so in case it does bubble up it doesn't
06:35overflow. Especially with a gas hob with an open flame that's a big fire risk. So
06:39use a big pot for your deep frying. Use a neutral vegetable oil with a high
06:44smoke point. This is sunflower but rapeseed is good too or peanut. And you
06:48want to get the oil to 180 degrees for these chops. So buy a thermometer if you
06:52don't have one. Every kitchen should have a thermometer. They're very very useful
06:55especially for things like meat cookery for example. But in the case of deep
07:00frying just a normal jam thermometer will do. So this is at about 190 which is fine
07:06for these chops but if your chops are thicker you want to use a lower
07:11temperature. So around 160 170 is sort of a good safe temperature for most pork
07:16chops because you want it to form that lovely rich golden brown crust at the same
07:20time that it cooks through. A little bit of pink in the pork is fine but you don't
07:24really want rare pork. I mean I don't mind it but it puts a lot of people off and
07:29also it's a bit chewier that way. And of course you want this to be nice and as
07:32tender and soft as possible in the sandwich form. So 180 will do for us.
07:41So we'll lay the chops in the hot oil.
07:52And because these aren't that big they'll only cook for about five or six minutes.
07:59All right so these chops are looking beautiful and golden brown look at that oh my god.
08:06So they're ready to come out. So drain them well. You can use a rack or just paper towel on
08:14a tray.
08:16And just like any meat you want to let them rest a bit before you cut into them or bite
08:23into them.
08:27And what that does is as the meat cools sort of evens out the cooking
08:33and it also makes the liquid inside less volatile so it doesn't come gushing out when you cut into
08:39it. So it keeps the juices in the meat basically. So let those rest for about five minutes and then
08:44we can construct our sandwiches.
08:47Okay so we've got everything we need now to make an awesome katsu sandow. We've got our katsu so we're
08:54just going to put it in a sandow. We've got our cabbage as well and a few special condiments.
08:58So it's not really a tonkatsu sandow without tonkatsu sauce. So katsu sauce is kind of like
09:03a Japanese brown sauce. You can buy it at any Asian supermarket. Some big supermarkets,
09:08normal supermarkets have it these days. You can make it yourself as well but it's kind of like
09:13making your own ketchup. Like it's kind of a faff and it's not going to be as good as the
09:17store
09:17bought stuff. So you should just buy some tonkatsu sauce. Really really lovely and sort of an
09:22essential flavor in a tonkatsu sandwich. We also have Kewpie Mayo. Kewpie Mayo is a Japanese brand
09:28of mayonnaise. It's very highly seasoned. It uses malt vinegar and whole egg yolks so it's a richer,
09:34slightly sweeter flavored mayonnaise. Really delicious. You can also by the way kind of make
09:38your own Kewpie Mayo at home. There are recipes online but you can also buy this just about anywhere
09:43these days as well. So you may as well get some. It's delicious. So supermarket white bread. This is
09:50this is the standard katsu sandow bread. I think it's really important to have this kind of bread
09:56for katsu sandow. You can use really whatever bread you like though but I think that the texture and the
10:00flavor of this is sort of nostalgic for me with these sandwiches. You don't want to get the cheapest
10:04white bread you can find because it's too flimsy. It'll sort of fall apart and squish down to become
10:09too thin. So you gotta get something that's got some substance to it. All right so bread. Kewpie Mayo
10:15on one side. Be generous with it. Then a lot of cabbage.
10:29Then katsu sauce straight on the cabbage.
10:33The cabbage basically will help to catch that sauce so it doesn't get too
10:38onto the bread which will make the bread really soft. Then our lovely tonkatsu.
10:47Little bit more sauce on there just in a big ring. A little bit more cabbage as well.
10:58Other piece of bread. Give it a good squish and then we slice and enjoy.
11:08Oh yes. Look at that. Lovely, juicy, delicious pork katsu sandow full of cabbage, full of sauce,
11:18full of kewpie mayo on delicious soft white bread. And it's simple and it's quick. There's really nothing
11:25stopping you from making this right now.
11:28shift which cuts a little bit more and odd and then our middle throwing some
11:29snow and bitter pĂĄ. And you know we can make it a little bit different to exclude coeur et
Comments