Okonomiyaki Recipe (Japanese Savory Cabbage Pancake)

Okonomiyaki recipe. Comfort food from Japan, a savory, shredded cabbage pancake topped with kewpie mayo and sweet okonomiyaki sauce. It makes a quick and easy dinner on a weeknight.

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• Ingredients
• How to Make Okonomiyaki
• Equipment
• Specialized Ingredients
• Okonomiyaki Recipe (Japanese Savory Cabbage Pancake)
• Related Posts
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Okonomiyaki is one of my favorite new foods. I fell in love with it on a trip to Japan a few years ago, where I learned to eat it straight off the flat-top griddle. When I got home, I knew I had to try it. What I didn't know was how easy it is to make. It's a thick and savory Japanese cabbage pancake, with a simple batter of flour, egg, water, instant dashi, and a lot of sliced cabbage. At first, you won't believe how much cabbage goes in the batter, but the cabbage softens on the griddle and is the backbone of the pancake.

The other key to Okonomiyaki is the toppings: sweet okonomiyaki sauce and tangy kewpie mayo. You can also add a pinch of powdered Aonori seaweed and dried tuna bonito flakes on top. If you really want to get fancy, you can do what my wife kept doing in Japan and get it with a fried, sunny-side-up egg on top.

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour (8.5oz/240g)
• 1 ½ teaspoons fine sea salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 ⅓ cups water + 2 teaspoons hondashi (or 1 ⅓ cups dashi, or just water)
• 1 pound green cabbage, shredded (about 10 cups)
• 4 green onions, minced (optional)
• 4 eggs
• 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 4 ounces thick-cut bacon (or thin-sliced pork belly)

Toppings

• Okonomiyaki sauce
• Kewpie mayonnaise
• Aonori powder (powdered nori seaweed) - optional
• Bonito flakes (katsuobushi) - optional
• Minced green onions - optional
  

How to Make Okonomiyaki

Mix the batter

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Then, stir in the dashi (water + hondashi) until thoroughly mixed. The batter should be thick, like bread dough. Add the cabbage and green onions to the batter and fold until all the cabbage is coated. (The okonomiyaki batter will be very thick at this point - that's fine.) Add the eggs and mix until the eggs are just combined with the batter.

Cook the pancakes

Preheat a griddle or nonstick skillet over medium low heat (300°F). Brush the surface of the griddle with the grapeseed oil. Put the cabbage batter on the griddle in 4 thick pancakes, each about 6 inches across and about 1 inch thick. Top each pancake with a single layer of bacon slices. (Don't overlap the slices.) Cook the pancake until the bottom is set, about 3 minutes. Carefully flip the pancakes, bacon side down. (If the pancake comes apart when you flip it, push it back together and tuck in any escaped ingredients.) Cook the bacon side until the bacon is starting to crisp and lightly brown, about 5 more minutes. Flip the pancake one more time, bacon side up, and cook until the bottom is lightly browned, about 3 more minutes.

Serve

Transfer each pancake to its plate, bacon side up. Spread okonomiyaki sauce over the top of the pancake (about 1 tablespoon). Then drizzle thin ribbons of kewpie mayonnaise across the top in tightly spaced lines (about another tablespoon). Optionally, sprinkle each pancake with a pinch of aonori, a big pinch of bonito flakes, and minced green onions. Serve and enjoy!

Equipment

These pancakes take up a lot of room, so I cook them on a griddle. You can make them in a cast iron skillet or a nonstick skillet, but the big (6-inch) pancakes are going to take up a lot of room, so you'll have to make them one at a time.

Specialized Ingredients

Hondashi

Dashi broth is the backbone of Japanese cooking. It is a light stock made by soaking Kombu (seaweed) and katsuobushi (shaved pieces of bonito—smoked skipjack tuna). Dashi is easy to make but takes a little time, so I turn to Hondashi. Hondashi is instant dashi—just add water—a shortcut used by many Japanese home cooks. You can find Hondashi at specialty Asian grocery stores or online. If you can't find it, you can use water.

Kewpie mayonnaise

Kewpie mayo is Japanese mayonnaise and an essential topping for Okonomiyaki. It is different from American mayonnaise, made entirely with egg yolks, and sold in its signature squeeze bottle with a picture of a kewpie doll on it. The squeeze bottle is essential because you want to drizzle thin ribbons of mayo across the top of the pancake; the squeeze bottle makes that possible. You can substitute American mayonnaise if you are desperate, but kewpie mayo is getting easier to find in regular grocery stores. (Or you can buy it from the Official Kewpie Mayo Amazon Storefront.) Try to use kewpie mayo in this recipe if possible.

Okonomiyaki sauce

Okonomiyaki sauce is another Japanese specialty ingredient, a sweet brown sauce explicitly made to top Okonomiyaki. It is based on Worcestershire sauce but is much sweeter, thicker, and made with dates and raisins. It is essential to this recipe; I haven't found a substitute, so seek out okonomiyaki sauce at your local Asian market. (Or on Amazon, where you can get regular okonomiyaki sauce, or my family's favorite, spicy okonomiyaki sauce.) Look for the Otafuku brand.

Aonori

Aonori is powdered seaweed and another ingredient you will have to seek out at Asian specialty stores (or on Amazon - aonori powder). I only use a pinch or two on top of each okonomiyaki pancake; a little bit covers a lot of space. The aonori is optional; it adds a nice touch of green to the top of the pancake, and a hint of the flavor of the sea, but it is not as crucial as the okonomiyaki sauce and kewpie mayonnaise.

Bonito flakes

Bonito is made of shaved, smoked skipjack tuna and is the base for dashi, as well as a topping used in this recipe, sprinkled on the top of the pancake so it will "wave at you" from the heat of the pancake. It is more widely available than the other toppings. It's not just at my local Asian specialty markets - though that's where I buy it, while I'm there for the other specialty ingredients. But I can find bonito flakes at my local health food store, Whole Foods, and, of course, Bonito flakes on Amazon. Bonito flakes are optional topping; my kids skip them because they have a strong fish flavor. I like a little pinch on top, but you can cover the top of the Okonomiyaki with bonito flakes if you like the smoked fish flavor.

Thick Cut Bacon or Thin Sliced Pork Belly

Pork belly is traditional in this recipe, but truly thin-sliced pork belly slices are not available at my local grocery stores. But thick-cut bacon is always available, so that's what I use in this recipe.

Vegetarian version

If you want a vegetarian version of this recipe, skip the bacon and the hondashi, or replace the water + hondashi with vegetable broth (preferably homemade vegetable broth). Also, don't use the (optional) bonito flakes.

Adapted from: Japanese Soul Cooking by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat

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