Kushikatsu

Ingredients

Kushikatsu can be made with chicken, pork, seafood, and seasonal vegetables. These are skewered on bamboo kushi; dipped in egg, flour, and panko; and deep-fried in vegetable oil. They may be served straight or with tonkatsu sauce.

Meat

beef (gyūniku), pork meat (butaniku) and cartilage (nankotsu), sausage, chicken parts including tsukune (minced), gizzard (sunagimo), skin (torikawa), and horse meat (baniku). Chicken egg and Japanese quail egg.

Seafood

Atlantic horse mackerel (aji), Japanese smelt-whitings (kisu), shishamo smelt, wakasagi blackwater smelt, prawn and shrimp (ebi), Japanese scallop (hotate or kaibashira), oyster (kaki), octopus (tako), squid and cuttlefish (ika).

Vegetable

onion, egg plant (nasu), bamboo shoot (takenoko), okra, tomato, poteto, sweet potato, Chinese yam (nagaimo), bell pepper (pīman), lotus root (renkon), greater burdock (gobō), pumpkin (kabocha), broccoli, asparagus, shiitake mashroom, garlic and shishito pepper.

Products and prepared

fish products - chikuwa, hanpen and kamaboko.dairy - hard, cream, and smoked cheese.prepared - bell pepper stuffed with minced pork, asparagus wrapped with bacon strips, chikuwa filled with hard cheese. Mochi rice cakes. Dumplings including Jiaozi (gyōza), shūmai, and beni shōga pickled ginger root colored bright pink.

Osaka area

The origin of kushiage is said to be served at food bars in downtown Osaka, in Shinsekai neighborhood Kushikatsu restaurants specialize in the dish. Shinsekai, particularly by a female owner of a small food bar since 1929 is said to be the pioneer cook, and her menu was quite popular among the district of hard working blue collars. She prepared meat on skewers and deep fried, which was a kind of fast food handy to eat, not costy but filling.

As that menu spread to other areas of Osaka and beyond, it is standard that kushikatsu are prepared with a single food not like that in Tokyo where for example they alternately put pork and onion on a skewer. Wider varieties of foods are prepared as the menu developed, on the contrally to those in Nagoya or Tokyo, for instance thin slice of pickled ginger or sausage by itself.

Generally speaking, the food on a skewer is smaller in Osaka style, and customers tend to order larger number of kushi compared to Tokyo or Nagoya that encouraged many kushiage restaurants using a premixed "batter flour" of powdered egg and flour, compared to that in Tokyo or Nagoya where batter is prepared with fresh egg, water and flour topped with panko crusts. Kushiage restaurants in Osaka on high-ends serve kushikatu in Tokyo-Nagoya style. Varieties include that grated yam is added for softer texture. New types of kushikatsu restaurants serve oil fondue style kushikatsu that you fry kushi on the table in deep pan with cooking oil. Kushinobō is a typical Osaka style kushiage restaurant on high end with franchiser across Japan, and it is appreciated for their unique serving style that until you tell them you are full and don't need any more, they continue to bring you variations of kushiage to your table endlessly. Diced cabbege leaves are free condiment prepared in large bowl on the table, which is believed to prevent feeling dull in the stomach.

Tokyo area

The basic kushikatsu in Kanto eastern Japan area including Tokyo is cooked with pork rib sliced in 3–4 cm (1.5 in) dice, thrusted on skewer with sliced onion or leek alternately. Battered with fresh egg, flour and thin layer of panko crust, the skewer is deep fried in vegetable oil either cottonseed, soybean, canola or rapeseed oil. At the table, you will season with thicker brown sauce, sweeter than Worcestershire sauce with mustard if they have on the cruet stand.

Nagoya area

In Nagoya and its surrounding cities, they serve local delicacy doteni, and you have an option to order kushikatsu with that. Contrary to the serving style in Osaka and Tokyo, in Nagoya, they will dip kushikatu in the thick sauce they grilled and sauteed beef sinew. That sauce is based on hatcho-miso, and the kushikatsu is called miso katsu.

Other varieties

Sophisticated sauce are prepared in subarban areas of other cities including Nishinomiya and Kobe, and several sauces are served along with kushikatsu course. Plain salt, soy sauce, sesami oil and ketchup along with tartar sauce, miso, mayonnaise and other dip style sauce would be the speciality of each restaurant.

Eating manner

Eating style is also unique at kushikatu restaurants and food bars as you dip kushikatsu into a pot of thinner sauce before eating. As a sauce pot is shared among customers, and putting your food after a bite is seen not only as a disgusting manner but for sanitary reasons.Some kusiyaki restaurants prepare menu and instruction in English and other languages to warn overseas travelers not to dip food into the shared sauce pot after you bite them, both for sanitary reason and customs. Instead, you will use a slice of cabbage on your table and scoop up sauce from the pot and pour it on your share of kushikatsu. In some restaurants they put a brush or spoon to the shared pot that you season the kushi on your dish.

Children's song for Kushikatsu

A comic kushikatsu song titled Kushikatsu wa ippon became popular to the generation born in 1990s as they enjoyed the song in children's song program on TV broadcast.

"Kushikatsuwa ippon" (Single Kushikatsu Skewer), broadcast on NHK channel

"Daruma no Ossan no Uta - sōsu no nidozuke wa kinshi ya de" (Song dedicated to Mr. Darma - never dip your kushikatsu twice in the sauce pot)