Katsudon

Katsudon is a popular Japanese food, a bowl of rice topped with a fried tonkatsu pork cutlet, egg, vegetables, and condiments. The dish's name is a portmanteau of the Japanese words tonkatsu and donburi.

Preparation

The tonkatsu for the katsudon dish is prepared by dipping the cutlet in flour, followed by egg, then dipping in panko breadcrumbs, and deep-frying. Next, into a boiling broth of dashi, soy sauce and onions, the sliced tonkatsu and a beaten egg is cooked.

Variants

Other bowls, made of cutlet and rice but without eggs or stock, may also be called katsudon. Such dishes include:

sōsu katsudon : with tonkatsu sauce or Worcestershire sauce, from regions such as Fukui, Kōfu, Gunma, Aizuwakamatsu and Komagane
demi katsudon or domi katsudon: with demi-glace and often green peas, a specialty of Okayama
shōyu-dare katsudon: with soy sauce-based tare sauce, Niigata-style
misokatsu-don: tonkatsu with a sauce made with hatchō miso on rice, a favorite in Nagoya

If pork is substituted with beef, it will be gyū-katsu-don. A variation made with chicken katsu 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 of the verb, meaning "to win" or "to be victorious". It is also a trope 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" is popular in Japanese films. However, as of 2019, police will never actually feed suspects during interrogation.