Pork Cutlet

I finally made a recipe for a Korean-style breaded tenderloin or pork cutlet with a special sauce. It is called “DonGaSeu, 돈가스” in Korean or Tonkatsu in Japanese. This was a food that so many people requested and I didn’t post yet. Now, I feel that I finished a delayed homework assignment from my viewers. If I am right, this is one of the foods that was introduced in Korea by Japan during the Japanese colonial period. I guess Japan got this type of food from the western world and modified it to their own tastes. The deep-fried meat for Korean-style dongaseu is almost the same with Japanese tonkatsu. However, the sauce you pour on top of the meat is a little different between the two countries. So, today, I will show you how to make Korean-style old fashioned dongaseu and the sauce that I enjoyed when I was little growing up in Korea. I will also show how to prepare the full set menu as a restaurant would serve dongaseu. It will have dongaseu, cooked rice, macaroni salad, cabbage salad, and kimchi. This will give you a good idea about how to prepare a whole meal easily. Isn’t it exciting? So, please follow my instructions and enjoy this delicious meal.

Yield: 4 Servings

Short Korean Lesson

• MuNeui (무늬) = Pattern
• MoYang (모양) = Shape

Video Instructions

Main Ingredients

• 4 Pieces Thinly Cut Pork or Beef (1 lb)
• 2 Cups Korean Bread Crumbs
• ½ Cup All Purpose Flour
• 2 Eggs (2 Pinches Salt)
• Cooking Oil (for Deep Frying)

Sauce Ingredients

• 1¼ Cup Water
• ¼ Cup Salted Butter
• ¼ Cup All Purpose Flour
• ¼ Cup Sugar
• 3½ Tbsp Soy Sauce
• 3 Tbsp Ketchup
• 2½ Tbsp Vinegar

Macaroni Salad Ingredients

• ½ Cup Macaroni (3 oz)(2 Cups Water + ½ tsp Salt)
• ⅓ Cup Sweet Corn
• 1 Tbsp Carrot
• 5 Tbsp Mayonnaise
• ½ Tbsp Sugar
• ½ tsp Vinegar

Cabbage Salad Ingredients

• 1 Cup Cabbage
• ¼ Cup Purple Cabbage
• ¼ Cup Onion
• Some Ketchup
• Some Mayonnaise

Directions

At first, you will need about 4 pieces of ¼ inch sliced pork or beef. Each slice is about 6 x 4 inch in the oval shape. I prepared both pork and beef in this post to show you. However, you can pick your favorite meat, including chicken. If your meat is too thick, slice it almost all the way in half and then open it up.

Pound both surfaces of the meat with the back side of a knife or a meat pounder to tenderize your meat.

Season the meat with some salt and black pepper. One generous pinch each of salt and black pepper will be good for one side. Marinate the meat while making the two other sides.

To make the macaroni salad, add ½ cup macaroni to 2 cups of boiling water with ½ tsp of salt. Bring it back to a boil and cook for about 10 minutes on high.

10 minutes later, drain out the water. When the macaroni is still hot, quickly season it with ½ Tbsp of sugar and ½ tsp of vinegar. This is a key step in making the salad taste better. Set it aside.

Chop 1 Tbsp worth of a carrot in fine pieces for macaroni salad. You will also need ⅓ cup of sweet corn and 5 Tbsp of mayonnaise. Combine the seasoned macaroni, sweet corn, carrot, and mayonnaise. Mix everything well.

You can think about eating KFC chicken with macaroni salad and coleslaw, since my next side that I am going to make is the cabbage salad.

To make the cabbage salad, prepare 1 cup worth of a cabbage, ¼ cup of purple cabbage, and ¼ cup of onion. Julienne the prepared vegetables. For better color, I used purple cabbage, but you can use all normal cabbage too. Be creative and you can also add some cucumber or carrot for better color and flavor.

Mix the cabbage and the onion in a bowl and keep it in the refrigerator to keep it fresh before serving. I love the raw onion flavor in this salad, however, if you do not like raw onion, you can skip it. But trust me, the raw onion is really good to eat together when you eat greasy food.

So the side menus are done now, let’s cook the main dish, dangaseu. To do that, start by preparing 3 flat bottomed dishes. Put ½ cup all-purpose flour into one dish and 2 cups of Korean or Japanese bread crumbs into another dish. Then, break 2 eggs and whisk them thoroughly with 2 Pinches salt in the last dish.

We will do a triple coating of the meat with these 3 ingredients before deep frying. So first, cover the meat evenly with the flour. Press down or rub all sides of the meat with some flour. Then, gently tap the flour covered meat in the air to remove excess flour. You want to have the right amount of flour on your meat.

Next, dip the floured meat in the egg mixture. Cover both sides with the egg using a fork or your fingers. Pick up the meat and let the extra egg drizzle down before you go to the next step.

And the last, put the egg covered meat into the bread crumbs and cover it with bread crumbs. I spent a good bit of time pushing down the meat on the bread crumbs for all sides. That way it will get plenty of bread crumbs on it. Do the same process for rest of the marinated meat. Set them aside while making the special sauce.

You can start to preheat your cooking oil for deep frying now to save some time. The right temperature for dongaseu is around 350 F. Keep your stove temperature on medium-high. While we are waiting for the oil to heat up, let’s make the sauce. To do that, first, melt ¼ cup of salted butter in a saucepan.

Add ¼ cup of flour to the melted butter. Stir it and cook it for few minutes, or until it becomes light brown.

Add rest of the sauce ingredients: 3 Tbsp ketchup, 3½ Tbsp soy sauce, ¼ cup sugar, and 2½ Tbsp vinegar. Mix them all. Then, pour 1¼ cups of water and mix it again.

Cook the sauce for about 3 minutes on medium. You can adjust the consistency of your desired sauce with the amount of water. Some people like runny sauce and some people like it a little thicker. This is the consistency I like for mine.

By now, your oil will be ready. You can check the right oil temperature by dropping few pieces of bread crumbs into the heated oil. When the bread crumbs float on the surface right away, it’s ready. So, put one breaded meat in the oil.

Deep fry for about 3-4 minutes on one side and then flip it and fry for another 3-4 minutes.

When it becomes nicely golden brown, take it out from the oil and put it on some paper towels to soak up the extra grease.

 

Everything is done for the cooking and it is time to assemble the meal. I filled a small round bowl with some freshly cooked rice. Press down on the rice to get a nice doom shape later. Flip the bowl upside-down and place the rice on a large serving plate. If you have any, you can put some black sesame seeds on top of the center of the rice – it makes the dish look even fancier. I prepared these two cute little silicon bowls. Put some macaroni salad in one and some kimchi in the other. This is radish kimchi called ggakdugi. Then, put some of the cabbage and onion salad next to the kimchi. Squeeze some ketchup and mayonnaise on it. If you do not have a bottle for doing it, you can use a small zip lock bag also. Put some mayonnaise or ketchup in the bag and cut a corner with scissors. Since macaroni salad already has mayonnaise, you might think it’s too much mayonnaise for one meal – or maybe you just don’t like mayonnaise much – in that case, here is other option for you: You can try use the special soy sauce dressing that I make for my beef and garlic chive salad instead. The cabbage salad and soy sauce dressing will taste really good with dongaseu. Lastly, place the dongaseu on a plate and pour some sauce on it. I put some fresh parsley on the dish for garnish beside the dongaseu. You can serve extra sauce in a sauce bowl so people can have more sauce if they want. It looks very fun and delicious. Try it someday.