Chicken Dishes
Chicken Katsu Curry
Chicken breasts beaten thin, coated in flour, egg and panko and shallow-fried until crisp, served sliced on rice with a smooth, mild Japanese-style curry sauce of onion, carrot, ginger, curry powder, soy and honey.
- Serves 4
- Hands-on 40 min
- Cook 35 min
- Mild; good for children
- Sauce freezes well
- Japanese
Method
For the sauce, heat the oil (1 tbsp) in a pan and cook the onion (1 onion) and carrot (1 carrot) gently for 10 minutes, until soft. Add the garlic (3 cloves) and ginger (15 g) and cook for 2 minutes.
Stir in the curry powder (2 tbsp) and flour (1 tbsp) and cook for 1 minute, then gradually add the stock (500 ml), stirring. Add the soy sauce (1 tbsp), honey (1 tbsp) and ketchup (1 tbsp), cover and simmer for 20 minutes, until the carrot is very soft.
Blend the sauce until completely smooth, then return to the pan. It should coat the back of a spoon: add a splash of water if too thick, or simmer a little longer if too thin. Season and keep warm.
Meanwhile cook the rice (300 g) following the packet instructions. Put each chicken breast (600 g) between two sheets of baking paper and bat out with a rolling pin to an even 1.5 cm thickness. Season.
Set out three plates: the flour (50 g), the beaten eggs (2 eggs) and the panko (100 g). Dip each breast in flour, then egg, then press firmly into the panko to coat all over.
Heat the oil (150 ml) in a large frying pan over a medium heat (170°C). Fry the chicken for 4–5 minutes each side, until deep golden and cooked through (75°C in the thickest part). Drain on kitchen paper, rest for 2 minutes, then slice.
Spoon rice on to each plate, lay the sliced chicken alongside, pour over the curry sauce and scatter with spring onions (2 spring onions).
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
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See also
Chef’s notes
- Japanese curry roux blocks (such as Golden Curry) make a quick alternative to the homemade sauce.
- For pork katsu (tonkatsu), use pork loin steaks batted to 1.5 cm and cook to 70°C.
- Shredded white cabbage and pickled ginger on the side are the usual Japanese accompaniments.
From Tokyo to the British high street
Katsu curry is Japanese: a breaded cutlet (katsu) served with rice and curry sauce. Curry first appeared in Japanese cookbooks in 1872, most likely brought by the British Royal Navy as curry powder, and was thickened with flour and served with rice to become a yōshoku (western-style) dish of its own.
Three Tokyo restaurants are each said to have been the first to combine katsu and curry: Kawakin in Asakusa (1918), Ōroji in Shinjuku (1921) and Ginza Swiss (1948). Ginza Swiss tells how the baseball player Shigeru Chiba asked for the two on one plate because eating them separately was too much bother, and still lists the dish as “Chiba-san’s curry”. In Britain katsu curry took off after the Wagamama chain began serving it in 1992, and here the name is often used for the curry sauce itself.
Sources for these notes
For the history above.
How this recipe was developed
We compared Barney Desmazery’s chicken katsu curry on BBC Good Food, Annie Rigg’s on BBC Food and the most-rated chicken katsu on Allrecipes.
- A sauce from scratch. Annie Rigg (BBC Food, 4.3/5 from 56 ratings) cooks onion, carrot, garlic and ginger with curry powder, flour, stock and soy; we do the same.
- Honey and ketchup. Barney Desmazery (BBC Good Food, 4.6/5 from 138 ratings) sweetens with honey and ketchup; we kept both and blended the sauce smooth.
- Even thickness, panko coat. Allrecipes’ Chicken Katsu (4.7/5 from 933 ratings) pounds the chicken thin and coats it in flour, egg and panko.
- Cook to temperature. We give a probe temperature so the chicken is safe without overcooking.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):
- BBC Good Food (Barney Desmazery): Next level chicken katsu curry (4.6/5, 138 ratings)
- BBC Food (Annie Rigg): Chicken katsu curry (4.3/5, 56 ratings)
- Allrecipes (sakuraiiko): Chicken Katsu (4.7/5, 933 ratings)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.