Weekend Cooking: Japanese Chicken Curry

I am currently doing a casual January in Japan on my blog, so I thought I should at least try to cook something Japanese for Weekend Cooking. We have been talking about trying to do Japanese chicken curry for a while so this seemed like the perfect chance.

The idea of what to cook was actually inspired by a new cafe near work. When I go there for lunch, they generally have a few different options, but they always include chicken katsu, Japanese chicken curry, and chicken parma (which is chicken schnitzel with a tomato sauce, ham and melted cheese on top) as a minimum. The interesting thing...they all use the same chicken with breadcrumbs as the base.  

So what's the difference between chicken katsu and chicken schnitzel. There are two main things. First, is the type of breadcumbs  - katsu has panko breadcrumbs whereas a schnitzel tends to have normal breadcrumbs. The second is that katsu also tends to be deep fried whereas schnitzel is shallow fried.

We ended up using a variety of recipes, from the instruction on the back of the Japanese curry cubes to this video at Recipetin Eats Japan to show us how to butterfly the chicken thighs. This is when you slice the thicker ends of the thigh and fold them out so there is a more even thickness before dipping them in flour, eggs and panko breadcrumbs and frying them.

I do have a recipe in one of my cookbooks to make your own curry cubes, and we might still do that at some point, but for this recipe we just went with the store bought variety.

This is not a precise recipe, as you can adapt it to your own tastes and, as I mentioned before, it is a bit of a mix of various different ideas.

What I will say is that this was delicious. The katsu was really crunchy. We will definitely be putting this into our regular rotation, although if my husband has his way we will just use store bought schnitzels for convenience reasons.

Japanese Chicken Curry

Chicken thighs, butterflied

Eggs, whisked

Flour

Panko breadcrumbs

3 Potatoes

2 Carrots

2 Onions

Japanese curry cubes (for example Golden Curry or Vermont brands)

Rice for serving

For the curry sauce, cook the onions until they are tender but not browned. Add the cubed carrots and potatoes along with sufficient water. When the potatoes are cooked add the curry cubes and cook according to the instructions.

Cook the rice

While the curry is cooking, take the thighs and dip them in the flour so that they are well covered, then dredge through the egg mix, followed by the panko breadcrumbs.

Deep fry for 3 minutes on each side, until the katsu are golden brown and cooked through. 

Slice across the narrowest part of the chicken and place on top of the rice and then add the curry sauce.

Weekly meals

Saturday - Out for dinner
Sunday - Japanese Chicken Curry
Monday - Chicken kebabs, baked potatoes, coleslaw
Tuesday - Pork chops, chips and gravy
Wednesday - Spaghetti Bolognaise
Thursday - 
Friday - Away for the weekend

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page