Welcome to another edition of Tokyo Noms: A Giant Monster Cookbook! This time we’re looking at another Asian inspired recipe with Golden Ghidorah Katsu! Well, I wish it was golden… it’s definitely golden fried in relation to food, but not quite living up to Monster Zero’s lusterous sheen. Oh well, it’s an homage no matter how you squint at it!

A Katsu By Any Other Name

What is katsu? Traditionally speaking, the term ‘katsu’ just refers to a cutlet that has been pounded out nice and thin. By that logic, there are many forms of katsu around the world, including but not limited to Japanese tori katsu, thinly pounded fried chicken cutlets and tonkatsu (pork cutlets), and even German/Austrian schnitzel, which can use veal or pork, can be considered a type of katsu! For the Ghidorah Katsu, I ran into hurdles procuring slabs of the three-headed dragon, so I opted to use pork cutlets, pounded nice and thin, coated in panko and fried up perfectly crisp and paired with a ‘traditional’ tonkatsu sauce for dipping or slathering. I even stacked them in three pairs to make even more of a reference to the monster that inspired them.

Recipe: Golden Ghidorah Katsu

Yield: 6 pork cutlets

Time: Doable for Dinner

Difficulty: 1.5/5

Ingredients

FOR THE KATSU

6 pork loin chops, approx 1/2-3/4in thick*

2 large eggs

1 Tbs oil

1 C flour

3 C panko

Salt, pepper, garlic powder, ground ginger for seasoning

Oil for frying**

FOR THE SAUCE

2 Tbsp ketchup

1 1/2 tsp Worcesterschire sauce

1 tsp Oyster sauce

1 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp ground ginger

KITCHEN ESSENTIALS NEEDED:

Large wok/pot for frying/deep fryer

Kitchen mallet or rolling pin

* chicken breasts can be used instead of pork, but will need to be butterflied and pounded extra thin to ensure proper cooking

** to avoid deep-frying, you can pan fry these cutlets, but the results will be different and darker in color due to proximity to heat at the bottom of the pan.

METHOD

BREADING THE CUTLETS

1. Place flour, eggs and panko into 3 separate, equal-sized bowls or pans. They should be large enough to fit your pork cutlets for easy breading.

2. Add oil to eggs and beat until evenly incorporated. This prevents the panko breading from falling off during frying.

3. Take your pork cutlets and remove as much remaining fat as possible.

4. Season each side of the cutlets with salt, pepper, garlic and ginger powders to taste.

5. Pound out your cutlets to an even thinness. To avoid splatter, place your cutlets inside of a large plastic bag before beating.

6. Coat each cutlet in flour before dipping in the egg mixture. Make sure to evenly apply egg coating to each side of the cutlet. This may require multiple flips and dips.

7. Take egged cutlets and dredge them through the panko breading, aiming for an even coating.

FRYING THE CUTLETS

8. Heat frying oil in pot until water dripped into the pot splatters and pops.

9. Add cutlets 2 at a time and cook 2 minutes per side

10. Remove and place on wire rack to cool.

*if cutlets are getting too dark too fast, your heat is too high. Regulate heat appropriately.

MAKING THE SAUCE

1. Add all sauce ingredients into a small bowl and mix.

2. Add more worcestershire sauce to taste. The sauce should be dark and rich, but sweet and tangy at the same time.

This recipe is deceptively easy. If you are at all familiar with deep-frying this should be a breeze for you. I originally tested this recipe at Kyle’s 30th birthday party for a large group! It was by far the easiest thing I cooked that night. Unfortunately I used very thick cutlets and did not pound them out correctly so the frying took much longer than anticipated. Needless to say those katsu were less ‘golden’ and more…. burnt! Everyone was pretty drunk though, so nobody seemed to mind. If you’re interested in that side of noodles we ate with the katsu, you may want to check out my recipe for Fried Manda Noodles right here on the the site (coming soon)!

CHEF’S RAMBLINGS:

USE THIN CUTLETS for the love of Godzilla do not buy extra thick pork chops for this. Not only will you get SWOL beating them out, but they will STILL take forever to cook!
I read about adding the oil to the eggs only recently and when I tried it with this recipe I about died, it worked so well! I am a purveyor of fried foods and I cannot believe I had never done this before. Oil in the eggs- a lifesaver!
To get extra thin katsu, slice criss-crossed lines halfway into one side of your pork chop before beeating. You may need to reshape your cutlets before frying though, because this gets them EXTRA thin.

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Tokyo Noms: A Giant Monster Cookbook is a collection of recipes created by Marisa Pickett for Tokyo Lives: A Giant Monster’s Podcast. Feel free to share, but please do not steal.