Pork Katsu-don

One of my favorite dishes to get for lunch at the Porter Exchange (most notably, Cafe Mami) is Pork cutlet-don. They have the meat pre-marinated and then fried up to order, mixed with some onions and an egg, and served steamy and hot! Quick, cheap, and very tasty!

The pork katsu-don always seemed like something that I could try my hand at making but my previous attempts weren't so great (read : failures). I never could get the sauce right, either it ended up too salty or just plain flavorless.

But then my roommate cooked it up once using a couple recipes and it tasted great, so I had to try one more time. I grabbed the recipes he used and then compared them to a couple other I found online and came up with the version I'm posting today. (This is the version I closely modeled : mmm-yoso)

Anyway, on to the food!

Pork Katsu-don

Ingredients
4 Pork cutlets (boneless pork chops - about 3/4 a pound)
1 medium onion, sliced
4 eggs, lightly beaten (can use more if you like)

Sauce
3 tbsp sake (or other rice wine or sherry)
3 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp mirin
5 tbsp soy sauce
3/4 cup water
1/3 tsp Dashi

For Dredging
Flour
Panko Breadcrumbs
More eggs, beaten

Method
1. Use a meat tenderizer to flatten out the cutlets.
2. Dredge the cutlets first in the flour, egg, then breadcrumbs.
3. Pan fry until almost cooked through, set aside.
4. In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil and then add the sake, sugar, mirin, and soy sauce. Return to a boil, add the dashi and simmer.
5. Pour 1/4 of the sauce into a small frying pan and bring the sauce to a simmer under medium heat. Add 1/4 of the onion.
6. Slice a cutlet along the width (try to maintain the shape of the cutlet) and place in the pan on top of the onions. Then pour 1/4 of the eggs on either sie of the cutlet. Cover and simmer for about a minute or so.
7. Remove cover and serve over rice.
8. Repeat 4-7 for the rest of the cutlets.
9. Top with some chopped scallions

NOTE: If you really like sauce, you can add 50% more to the recipe or even double it.