Pork Tonkatsu Recipe With Miso & Cabbage Salad

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This pork tonkatsu recipe hails from Japan via Austria. Japanese pork tonkatsu began life as Austrian weiner schnitzel, arriving in the 1800s during the Meiji period when Japan was opening up to Western influences.

The pork is coated in panko breadcrumbs - those lovely, jaggedy, light Japanese ones - and deep-fried until golden. And instead of a side of sauerkraut, it's served with crisp, cold cabbage and a sauce that's sweet and tangy with a umami miso depth that's distinctly Japanese. The contrast of temperatures and textures is rather brilliant.

I like it sliced and shared, perhaps with miso soup and rice. The cabbage isn't just there for show - it provides a fresh counterpoint to the rich, crispy pork.

For the cabbage salad Serves: 4

1 small green cabbage, very finely sliced using a mandoline
1 tbsp white miso
30g Japanese soy sauce
60g vegetable oil
10g rice vinegar
5g toasted sesame oil

For the pork tonkatsu

4 pork chops (125-150g each)
100g plain flour
Salt Black pepper, freshly ground
2 eggs
75g panko breadcrumbs
500ml oil for deep-frying, this should be an inch or so of oil in a medium to large pan

To serve

Method

Prepare the cabbage salad. Use a balloon whisk to mix together the dressing of white miso, soy sauce, vegetable oil, rice vinegar and sesame oil. Toss the shredded cabbage in the dressing and set aside.
Prepare the pork chops. Place the pork chops on a board and gently pound them with a meat tenderizer or a rolling pin. Trim any excess fat, cut out any bone, and use a knife to make five diagonal slashes in each pork chop.
To ‘breadcrumb’ the pork, arrange three shallow dishes in a row. Put the flour into one and season with salt and pepper; crack the eggs into the next, and beat lightly with a fork; tip the panko breadcrumbs into the final dish. One by one, dredge a pork chop in the seasoned flour and shake off any excess. Next, dip it into the egg-filled dish, and finally the breadcrumbs, so the pork chop is evenly coated. Place the pork chops on a board ready for frying.
Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan to 175°C – or until a Panko breadcrumb sizzles and turns golden when dropped in the oil. Carefully place one or two of the pork chops at a time into the oil. Fry for 5-7 minutes until golden and crispy. Use a thermometer to check that the meat is cooked. The centre of the thickest part of the chop should read 70°C. Remove the pork to rest on absorbent kitchen paper.
To serve, cut the pork into 2cm wide diagonal strips, arrange on a platter and drizzle with zigzags of Tonkatsu sauce or Japanese mayonnaise. Serve the cabbage salad on the side.

About the author

Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.

Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.

Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.

Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).