Why hello there, and welcome to Storytime With Sleepy Jon. No, wait, the other thing. Kitchen Catastrophes. It’s ya boy…Sleepy Penis. Great Vine reference, me, it’s not at all off-putting. The point is that this is Kitchen Catastrophes, and Jon’s pretty tired. It’s his own fault, but…so are a lot of other people’s problems for which we feel sorry for them, so I’m going to expect my bumbling Winnie-The-Pooh ass to be equally socially supported for wearing myself out. So let’s talk about a recipe I made…okay, but hated, so I remade it better, Chicken Katsu. Or, if you want to avoid the barely-conscious mumbles of a mad man, click this link, and you can get to cooking. Everyone else, let’s cut in. Because this is a dance now?

Katsu-mari Damacy

La la, la-la-la, I never really played this game. But somehow this-song-is-still-in-my-brain. Nailing it. (I DO know that the song uses “Na”s rather than “la”s, but I am physically incapable of ending a string of “na”s with anything other than “BATMAN!”)

Nah la, my young ward.

None of that is relevant to what we’re talking about. Which is Chicken Katsu. Which is…I was going to say a variant of tonkatsu (PORK Katsu), but I don’t know which came first, the Chicken or the Pig. Let me look it up.

…

Huh. The Pig came before the chicken, but FIRST was beef katsuretsu. Which is a great lead-in to explain what the hell we’re even talking about: Katsu is a method for preparing meat, and an elision of katsuretsu, which is, in turn, a phonotactic transliteration of “cutlet” from English! Which is so much jargon it’s making my eyes cross, but my “spirits” rise. I have hard “spirits” now. Actually, too much hard spirits is WHY I’m tired right now, but I’m distracting myself.

So, let’s go step-by-step: A phonotactic transliteration is when you convert a word into another language, but make it fit the sound-pattern rules (phonotactics) of the new language. This is one of those things that’s pretty deep in, and a little hard to explain, but most languages have “phonotactic constraints” or semi-secret RULES about how you MAKE words in that language. This is a thing that linguistics figured out, but most people never think of.

As an example: there are no English words that start with the –ng sound. You know, the sound you make at the end of “thing” or in the middle of “linguistic”? But words like that DO exist in other languages, as the THOUSANDS of Nguyens from South Asia can attest. And as the ones that came to America can ALSO attest, we are REALLY BAD at saying that name: “nuh-GOO-yen?” It’s more like a nasal W/Y. Woo-en, or “yoo-en” depending on region. We also don’t start words with –nk. Like in “think”, or “ink”, etc. And you KNOW that’s a rule, because if you try and make up a word starting with those sounds, it straight-up sounds wrong. “nkit” sounds less like an English word than “turg”, despite both being equally made up. That’s because nkit breaks the rules, while “turg” doesn’t.

Well, none of the Linguistic rules, at least.
(Editor’s note: Sleepy Jon was CERTAIN that fictional Character Turd Ferguson here was named “Turg” for some reason)

So “katsuretsu” is just “cutlet”, but made to fit Japanese’s rules:

First, since the letters don’t make the same sounds, the U becomes an A,  and the C becomes a K. (Katlet)

Then, the two Ts have to be ‘fixed’: in Japanese, all syllables end in a vowel, or the letter N. (Technically, there’s a third option, but I do NOT have time to explain it.) SO the two Ts have to get vowels added, becoming “tsu”, (katsuletsu).

Then, the L becomes an R, because…look, you KNOW Japanese (and several other Asian countries) have an issue with Ls and Rs. Japan just defaults to R. Boom, you’ve made katsuretsu!

(For a similar discussion/example, check out our discussion of transliterating “Christmas” into Hawaiian, making “Kalikimaka”, or watch Tom Scott’s video on the subject. )

Then, because Katsuretsu is a long-ass word to be throwing around for simple chunks of meat, they elide it, which is the phrase for when you just delete parts of a word you don’t need any more. Or should I say, “any mo’”? So retsu gets tossed in the trash, and we’re left with Katsu: the modern Japanese word for “cutlet.”

A Meat History Mystery

Now, as you might guess by the name being a transliteration (or not, if you’re still stumbling over the dense linguistic jargon I’ve been rolling over and through like a great sleeping Thanksgiving-bloated kaiju) katsu/cutlets AREN’T technically a ‘traditional’ Japanese food:they were introduced to the country as Yoshoku, or Western food. Basically, what happened was, back in the Meiji Restoration, SOMEONE from the west kept ordering fried meat cutlets.

It could have been Italians asking for cotoletta alla Milanese, it could have been Germans ordering weinerschnitzel, it could have been Americans ordering Veal cutlet… these are the most likely candidates for two reasons: first, as noted, the Japanese understanding of a ‘cutlet’ includes frying, which not every culture did. And second, because, as I said a while ago, the FIRST Japanese cutlets were BEEF, meaning they were probably substitutes for VEAL. Interestingly, the most likely candidate is, in fact, America, because the other two have distinct issues. Firstly, the Italian cotoletta alla Milanese traditionally is a cut of meat STILL ATTACHED to the rib bone pounded and breaded. And secondly, because Germany notes a different between “cutlets” and “schnitzel” (again, cutlets typically include a bone.) Whereas, in AMERICA, if the meat still has the bone, we call it a CHOP, and if it doesn’t, we call it a cutlet. So there’s really only one group who would have called their fried breaded meat chunks with no bones “cutlets”. So Katsu is just what happens when you try to order weird American food in Japan. 

Imagine if a New Yorker/New Jersey person tried to order “Sunday Gravy” (slow-cooked red pasta sauce). Like, that’s not even a normal phrase for the REST OF AMERICA, let alone explaining it to the Japanese.

It’s quite a popular food option in Japan, appearing in many sandwiches, curries, and bento boxes. And the term has expanded over time, as noted. The Original beef katsu then led to “tonkatsu”, which is a portmanteau  of “ton” or “pork” and…I mean, pretty clearly “katsu”. So “porkkutlet” when directly translated.

Later, they made Chicken Katsu, Ham Katsu, Menchi Katsu (which is, hilariously, the transliteration of “mince”, because it used ground meat) They use different sauces, like the aforementioned curry, or miso, or a specific sauce they invented for it that is…basically just a Japanese attempt to replicate barbecue sauce without smoky or spicy notes.  Seriously, the ingredient list starts with Ketchup and includes Brown Sugar and Worcestershire sauce. Which REALLY raises the odds of this whole thing being America’s idea. “Can I get a veal cutlet with barbecue sauce?” is a VERY American question when in Tokyo.

I believe in my soul that this man has ordered a light beer in a German bar. Maybe as a joke, but he did it.

More complicated katsus might add additional ingredients, sandwiching things like cheese, yams, or shiso inside the meat. So with all this elaborate history, how complicated is this dish to make? Let’s dive in, and get your host truly involved.

Pounded, Fried, and Cold Inside

The answer is “not at all”. Literally, the process is “flatten, bread, and fry”. That’s it. Which isn’t a complicated process at all…when you’re properly equipped. Which is why, of course, I first went into this completely UN-prepared. I made this dish first MONTHS ago, as part of a going-away party for site Otaku Joe Seguin, when he traveled to Japan for a couple weeks.

Now, the difficulty here is that Joe and I have very different culinary upbringings, and have had MANY issues regarding what we consider “default” kitchen equipment, a process that goes back to Kitchen Catastrophe #5. In this case, we encountered the issue that Joe A: owned no neutral oil to fry in, and B. didn’t own an oil/candy thermometer. (In fact, he owns NO cooking thermometers) Since these facts were discovered the day of the party, we had to forge on with what we had. Which was an alarmingly large vat of Coconut oil, and the vain hope we could balance out the heat on the stove-top.

I brought up that this recipe was made a while ago, because if I took this tub out of a cupboard TODAY, it would be SOLID: Coconut Oil melts in the high 70’s.

This was honestly a mere continuation of my issues with the recipe, as we had earlier decided to forego my personal preferences for culinary accuracy: the majority of Chicken Katsu recipes directly call for using chicken thighs in preparation, as that is more traditional. Which makes sense: Chicken thighs are cheaper than chicken breast, contains more fat, and “has better flavor”. Those quotation marks, along with basic literacy, should tell you that I, personally, disagree, and don’t like chicken thighs. I don’t personally get particularly more flavor, I find thighs are very easy to under-process, leaving chunks of uncooked fat and gristle, and in general, vastly prefer chicken breast in almost every application. BUT, in honor of Joe’s impending departure to Japan, we went with authenticity.

I honestly thought that I took a picture of me trimming the thighs, but apparently I was so unhappy with the call, I didn’t take any pictures. Instead, enjoying this shot of the dredging stations, with a single chicken thigh hiding in the panko.

So I shrugged, trimmed some thighs, pounded them out, breaded them, and dropped them in the hot oil. Which turned out to be VASTLY too hot, scorching the shit out of the first two batches of katsu before we vaguely stabilized the temp to produce less obliterated cutlets. We took no pictures of this, because, as I JUST told you, I was in the middle of burning food in boiling oil, meaning I was at PEAK cooking stress.

Also, fun fact that I honestly have no idea if it impacted what we were doing, but it turns out the temp we were AIMING to cook at is also the smoking point of coconut oil. That might at least explain why I consistently though even the batches that turned out okay were going bad: the OIL was burning, not the meat.

Things were so bad, we attempted to swiftly invent an “oven-fry” method of cooking them.

I took a picture of THIS bad idea, but not hte

This did not go well. Any of this. The oven frying KIND OF worked, in that at least it didn’t CHAR the breading, but overall I was displeased with the results. They were edible though I didn’t eat half of mine, because I ran into an un-melted chunk of gristle. However, overall, people seemed to like it, or were at least polite enough to lie to my face.

This failure stabbed at my heart, for, as I haven’t revealed yet, Chicken Katsu is one of my FAVORITE entrees in Japanese cooking. If I go to a sushi place more than once, I will order their katsu to see how it is.

Chicken Katsu and Tamagoyaki are my go-to.

To have failed on a product I loved so much cut me to the core. So I swore vengeance.

The Dark Bite Returns

About a week later, after Joe was gone to Japan, I personally bought an oil thermometer to leave at his house to prevent such tragedies in the future.

An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of chicken.

I also used Chicken breast instead of thigh, because when cooking for one, it’s easier to splurge on more expensive meat, and also to pander to myself. And I cannot express how much cleaner and easier this process was. Knowing when the oil was the right temp, using a single chunk of meat, not needing to make 10 of them for a party, take that all away, and the process was laughably low-key, and the results similarly impressive in their simplicity.

This looks like a rad fuckin’ chicken tender .

THAT is the color this is supposed to be. And I can proudly say that, once sliced into chunks and served over rice with sauce, it was exactly what I hoped it would be.

This is success.

Maybe there’s a lesson in that. I don’t know. I’m tired again. Oh, yeah, I passed out IMMEDIATELY after finishing the description of the transliteration process, and had next-day Jon handle this. But he had a BUNCH of stuff to handle, which is why we’re a day late. I’m really sorry about that, and especially for not warning you all, but I ended up stacking like, 7 different responsibilities between Sunday and Monday, so I went with putting off the one that only put ME in a bad position, rather than would make other people’s lives harder too. I may be a dick, but I strive not to be a burden.

I do recommend trying this recipe at home, as long as you’ve got a reliable way to measure/control your oil temp, and hope you like it as much as I did!

THURSDAY: THERE WILL BE A POST, IT WILL BE ON TIME. THIS IS ALL I CAN PROMISE YOU.

MONDAY: SEE THURSDAY.

Recipe

Chicken Katsu

Serves 2-4

Ingredients

1 pound chicken thighs or breast, trimmed and cleaned

¼ cup flour

2 eggs

½ cup panko

1 quart neutral oil

Tonkatsu sauce

Prepared white rice.

Preparation

1. Preheat the oil to 350 Fahrenheit in a medium saucepan or pot.

2. Prepare the dredging stations: acquire three shallow dishes or plates. In the first plate, shake out the flour. In the second, beat the two eggs to form a wash. And in the third, pour the panko.

3. Pound the chicken to around ¼” thickness (about 8 mm), and cut into 4 sections of roughly equal size.

4. Dredge and coat the chicken, by first turning in the flour to coat (shaking off excess), then turning in the egg wash, and then flipping in the panko to coat.  

5. Cook chicken in the oil for roughly 3 minutes per side, until golden brown.

6. Slice into ½” thick strips, and serve over rice with sauce.