How to make okonomiyaki and that delicious okonomiyaki sauce (with recipe!)
Forget your quintessentially Dutch pancake with cheese and syrup. Okonomiyaki, a savory Japanese pancake, is what you want! (Also great for Scrabble, by the way.) The base of this pancake is the same and super easy to make. You can vary the toppings, but one thing you absolutely must always put on this pancake is okonomiyaki sauce. I’ll tell you how to make both.
Hello, new favorite recipe! And hello to your new favorite sauce, because you’ll genuinely want to put this on everything. As with pretty much every Japanese sauce, really. Just look at Kewpie mayo: who isn’t addicted to it? It’s also in this recipe, of course.
How to make okonomiyaki
- Cut the cabbage into thin strips and mix it with the spring onion, flour, eggs and any other filling. Don’t season it with too much salt, because the sauce and bonito flakes are already very salty on their own. The batter will probably remain a little loose. This is because of the large amount of cabbage compared to the rest. Don’t worry: once you start frying, it will form a perfectly good pancake.
- Heat a thin layer of sunflower oil in a frying pan. Put the batter in the pan and press it down so that a thick pancake forms. Make sure you leave a little space around the outside: this will be useful when you flip the pancake later.
- Fry the pancake over medium-low heat, with a lid on the pan, for about 5 to 7 minutes. The ingredients need to cook through, but of course the outside shouldn’t burn.
- Flip the pancake after 5 to 7 minutes. The bottom should be beautifully golden brown. You can also flip the pancake into another pan and continue cooking it there. Fry the pancake for about 5 more minutes, until the other side is golden brown too.
How to make okonomiyaki sauce
Making your own okonomiyaki sauce is incredibly easy. There’s a good chance you already have most of it at home. And by “most of it,” I mean: of the 3 ingredients you need. To make your own okonomiyaki sauce, mix 3 tablespoons of ketchup, 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and 1 teaspoon of soy sauce. That’s all! Feel free to triple or quadruple the amount of ingredients to really stock your Japanese pantry with extra okonomiyaki sauce.
Finishing the okonomiyaki
Now that the Japanese pancake and sauce are ready, you can finish your creation. Place the okonomiyaki on a plate and spread a layer of the okonomiyaki sauce over it. Add the mayonnaise on top. For a beautiful pattern, pipe the mayonnaise in zigzag lines over the pancake. Place the pancake so that the mayonnaise lines are horizontal in front of you. Now use a satay skewer (or a small paring knife) to draw lines toward you. Start at the top. This way, you draw a line through all the mayonnaise stripes and create a pattern. Repeat this across the width of the pancake. Finally, place some bonito flakes in the center.
I wanted to write “enjoy your meal” in Japanese here (with the help of Google Translate), but I don’t think that would help anyone. So, for now: enjoy!
Read also:
- Cooking Japanese rice? Here’s how to do it perfectly
- Research shows: these are the most incomprehensible words on a menu
- 6x special combinations with Japanese mayonnaise
