We strip 4 pork cutlets right down to their preventing weights and see who’s bought essentially the most meat inside.
Japan loves tonkatsu (pork cutlet). It may be eaten as-is, usually accompanied by sides of rice and cabbage, or it may be used as a constructing block to make katsudon (a pork cutlet rice bowl with egg and/or sauce), put between slices of bread as a katsu sandwich, or lined with roux to make katsu curry.
Being so standard and versatile, tonkatsu is a mainstay within the ready meals sections of Japanese supermarkets. Nonetheless, each time we discover ourselves staring longingly at tremendous market tonkatsu (one thing that occurs on a near-daily foundation), we will’t assist however surprise how a lot precise meat they’ve. We don’t suppose our tender hearts may deal with the shock and disappointment of biting into tonkatsu solely to come back away with it feeling extra like a mouthful of bread crumbs than a slab of scrumptious pork.
So we determined to develop into pioneers within the area of tonkatsu analysis by procuring pork cutlets from 4 main Japanese grocery store chains, eradicating all of their breading, and seeing which supplies you essentially the most precise meat in your yen.
Pictured clockwise from top-left within the photograph under are tonkatsu from the grocery store chains Livin (a part of the Seiyu group), York Meals (a part of the 7-Eleven group), Aeon, and Life.
Let’s begin this weigh-off with Life, who fees 429 yen for his or her pork cutlet.
Having by no means eliminated the breading from a cutlet earlier than, we had been shocked by how a lot effort and time it took. Within the case of life’s tonkatsu, the breading had firmly connected itself to the meat, with no free pocket of air between the 2, which imparted a sense of high quality.
As soon as we had lastly kneaded the entire breading off, we put Life’s tonkatsu on the size…
…which confirmed a weight of 110 grams (3.9 ounces).
Subsequent up was Livin, whose 459-yen tonkatsu comes conveniently pre-sliced into six items, which is particularly useful for those who’re considering of utilizing it for katsu curry.
Up on the size it goes, and…
…it is available in even heavier than Life’s with 115 grams of pork.
At this level, we had been considering that every one of our cutlets may find yourself within the 110/115 -gram ballpark, however after we weighed York Meals’s 430-gram tonkatsu, which additionally comes pre-sliced…
…we found we had solely 98 grams of pork! And the downsizing continued with Aeon’s 462-yen cutlet…
…which had a scant 79 grams of pork.
In order for meat mass, Livin is the winner right here.
● Livin: 115 grams of meat
● Life: 110 grams of meat
● York Meals: 98 grams of meat
● Aeon: 79 grams of meat
What’s extra vital, although, is the fee efficiency of every, and calculated when it comes to value per 100 grams of pork, Life is the worth chief right here, whereas Aeon is the most costly, by a fairly extensive margin.
● Life: 390 yen per 100 grams of meat
● Livin: 430 yen per 100 grams of meat
● York Meals: 438 yen per 100 grams of meat
● Aeon: 584 yen per 100 grams of meat
As for which one tastes the very best? With taste-testing duties falling to our Japanese-language reporter Masanuki Sunakoma, he declares Livin’s tonkatsu the winner. Seasoned with mojio, salt constructed from seaweed, every chunk of Livin’s tonkatsu is sort of a burst of concentrated umami, Masanuki says. Even at room temperature it retains an important texture with simply the correct quantity of crispness to its breading, and so even when, at 495 yen, it’s the most costly tonkatsu total on this bunch, he thinks it’s value it, particularly because it’s additionally the second-best worth in value per gram.
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