Never Not Hungry

First, please understand. It hurts me to my core that I can’t actually eat like this anymore. At almost forty, gone are the days of deep fried anything that doesn’t immediately turn into +3 on the scale the next day. Neither do I make these for my husband, and my kids get them maybe twice a year. They are so good they’ll make you want to smack your mama, so please be sure she’s out of the room when you take your first bite.

Beef karokke is…well, let’s put it this way. If an American comfort food-aholic and a brilliant Japanese person got together and decided to create something in the kitchen, this is what they would make.

The thing about this recipe is that I don’t really have a recipe for it. I will do my best to give you guidelines, but you may have to refer to the pictures, or any number of recipes you can find online. I’ll source some down below.

Here are some pics of the process:

Cook a pound of  ground beef (you probably want to go lean here, as the finished product has enough fat in it). You might even start with frying up some onion along with, if you’re feeling spicy.

Boil and mash a couple of pounds of potatoes. Doesn’t matter so much in this recipe what kind of potatoes you use. Also, I think I usually make about double the potatoes and use the rest for mashed potatoes the next day.

Combine meat and potatoes, season well. You can go as easy as salt and pepper, add an herb or two, or go really nuts and throw in some curry powder.

Now take some of the beef/potato mixture–about 1/4 cup maybe?–and roll it into a ball. Flatten a bit so it’s more like a patty than a ball.

Next you’ll want to preheat your oil–if you have a thermometer, you want it around 370, as you are only trying to crisp and brown the outside, not cook the inside.

Then comes the fun, and way super messy part. Get three bowls. Put some regular ol’ flour in the first one, a couple of well beaten eggs in the next, and some panko crumbs (can be found in the Asian aisle of most supermarkets) in the last one. Put them in a row close together, as in like such as:

Then do this:

After doing that about a million times, you will have a cookie sheet full of poorly lit korokke patties just waiting to get their fry on.

So, let’s give them what they want. Because we want it too.

Awww, yeah…

Now THAT is good stuff.

Some people, people who don’t know any better, like to top these with tonkatsu sauce, or even ketchup. But I think there’s nothing better than the tasted of just plain “fried”. I know you know what I mean.

So, hopefully the instructions are clear enough. You really can’t go too wrong with these. But if you really need something to go by, here are a couple of korokke recipe sources:

1. About.com korokke recipe

2. Group Recipes korokke recipe