Kushikatsu is a dish of meat, seafood, and vegetable skewers dipped in batter (flour and bread crumbs) and fried in oil. It is an Osaka specialty, centered around Osaka's Shinsekai.

There are two main types of kushikatsu in Osaka. The first is your typical dish of familiar ingredients, fried and eaten dipped in a thick, Japanese-style Worcester-based sauce that is made at each shop. The other type uses more high-quality ingredients with more creative toppings and sauces.

Today, the head chef of Kushiage Kazuya in Kita-Shinsekai, Osaka, Mr. Takahito Kato, will show us how to make your standard kushikatsu dish.

The ingredients usually include beef, pork, shrimp, salmon, onions, and mushrooms. Additionally, you can also use your own favorite meat, fish, or vegetables.

*Note: Japanese Worcester sauce is sometimes called “tonkatsu sauce” abroad and is different from the thin, British, Worcestershire sauce.

First, let's make the sauce. It's quite easy. Combine the sauce ingredients, heat, bring to a boil, then let it cool. You can enhance the flavor by adding the mirin first and skipping the alcohol. If you don't have mirin, you can substitute white wine and sugar (white wine to sugar ratio, 3:1). It will taste just as delicious, even if you use white wine instead of Japanese sake!

Next, cut each ingredient to the desired size, and skewer. For the shrimp, it is best to pierce the skewer through the shell, creating an S-shape.

Next, make the batter that holds the ingredients and the bread crumbs together. Combine flour, baking powder, grated nagaimo (yam), and water, and mix until thick. If you don't have nagaimo, you can use another thickening agent such as yam powder, taro, cornstarch, or tapioca powder.

Once you make the batter, dip in each ingredient. Lightly coat the surface with the batter. It will have a light texture and a crisp finish. Be careful not to cover it in too much batter. Otherwise, you risk having it absorb too much oil, leaving a greasy taste in your mouth.

After coating in batter, add the bread crumbs. Make sure the bread crumbs are fine enough to lightly cover the entire surface.

Once your ingredients are covered in batter, it's time to fry them. Add a generous amount of oil into a pan or a fryer, heat to around 180ºC, and then add your ingredients. Be sure to turn over the ingredients occasionally so that they fry evenly. Remove ingredients from the oil when they have floated to the top and reached a golden brown color. It should take about 3 minutes for meats and 2 minutes for vegetables and seafood.

After removing your food from the oil, hold them over a dish to drain any excess oil. Hold skewers from the top, with the ingredients at the bottom, and rotate them vigorously, using the centrifugal force to remove remaining oil. Discarding the excess allows you to enjoy a lighter texture, and eat a lot more without worrying about getting an upset stomach.

Time to dig in!

Hold the skewer from the top of the stick, and immerse the ingredients into your homemade sauce. The sauce adds a savory finish to the taste with the sweetness of the mirin and the richness of the Worcester sauce. The thin batter adds a crisp texture to the plump body of the shrimp. If you eat only the kushikatsu on their own, you may get an oily feeling in your mouth. You may want to prepare some raw, thinly sliced cabbage, which you can use to rest your chopsticks, and enjoy eating with the sauce. With this, you can get rid of the oily feeling in your mouth, and enjoy even more kushikatsu! It’s healthy if there’s a vegetable, right?!

Set a pot on the table, gather your favorite ingredients, and fry them yourself, enjoying your own kushikatsu party in your own home!

Kushikatsu is easy to make at home by frying your favorite ingredients. However, professional kushikatsu is made with special attention to how it is coated in the batter as well as how it is fried. In Osaka, you can find many different combinations of ingredients, including dessert-style skewers of fried ice cream puffs and bananas. Once the coronavirus outbreak has settled, feel free to visit Osaka, and try these various skewered dishes for yourself.

With these fried kushikatsu skewers, you can enjoy the taste of many different ingredients. The courses (starting from 4680 yen, tax included) serve each skewer individually fried one by one, so you can be sure they are always freshly fried to perfection. Here, you can spend your time relaxing in a luxurious, fun Japanese space. Kushiage Kazuya is taking preventive measures against coronavirus including use of employee masks, regular hand-washing and disinfection with alcohol, open doors and proper ventilation, as well as maintaining set intervals between customers by limiting reservations.

Text by: Efeel

*The above article is based on information from June 2020

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