Home-style ── Yoshoku (Japanese Western-style dishes)
Hanbaagu
Hamburg steak — a pan-fried patty of ground beef or beef and pork
A pan-fried patty of ground meat mixed with onion and breadcrumbs. Said to have shifted toward a fully cooked, bulked-up style to suit a food culture wary of raw ground meat.
- Meat
Lineage
What it's made of
Cut into it and juice seeps out, mixing into the demi-glace sauce on the plate. The contrast between a well-browned, fragrant crust and a soft, plump interior is said to be the point. Alongside beef-only versions, a mix of beef and pork is also widely favored, and it has long been a staple of home cooking.
How it's made
The usual method is to knead beef or a beef-pork mix with minced onion, breadcrumbs, and egg, shape it into an oval patty, and pan-fry or grill it. Slapping the patty between the palms while shaping is said to drive out air pockets so the juice stays sealed in during cooking. Some places finish it with demi-glace sauce or a Japanese-style grated-daikon sauce, and home cooks often mix ketchup with Worcestershire-style sauce instead.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that after Western hamburg steak was introduced to Japan in the Meiji era, it's said to have shifted, to suit a food culture wary of raw ground meat, toward a fully cooked style bulked up with onion and breadcrumbs. It's said to have taken firm hold from the Showa era on as an easy-to-make yoshoku dish for home cooking, and it also became a familiar item on school lunch menus.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
- At teishoku diners, shokudo, and machi-chukaA guide to the teishoku set-meal format, free rice refills, table placement, and paying at a shokudo-style diner.
Dishes in the same style
- Biifu ShichuuBeef and root vegetables simmered in a demi-glace-style sauce. Introduced as a high-end dish at Tokyo yoshoku restaurants in the Meiji era, it's said to have settled onto home tables as packaged roux spread.
- PikataThin meat coated in flour and beaten egg, then pan-fried in butter. Said to have settled in as a lighter, egg-only-coated line distinct from the breaded fried dishes of yoshoku cooking.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Contrast
- TonkatsuBreaded, deep-fried pork served with shredded cabbage. Said to trace to a Western-food restaurant that opened in Ginza in the Meiji era, which took up the cutlet and added touches like shredded cabbage on the side.
- Biifu ShichuuBeef and root vegetables simmered in a demi-glace-style sauce. Introduced as a high-end dish at Tokyo yoshoku restaurants in the Meiji era, it's said to have settled onto home tables as packaged roux spread.