How to cook Japanese style Hamburger steak 〜ハンバーグ〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taishin's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make hamburger steak. So this is probably the most loved dish of all the kids in Japan. And this was definitely one of my favorite dishes when I was growing up as a child. Except for the fish, because I always loved fish. And in Japan we call this hambagu, which comes from the German city Hamburg, probably the origin of hamburger, not sure. What it is is very similar to hamburger patty, cooked with a special sauce. There are several variations of sauce for this in Japan. I'm going to show you today the variation that my grandmother always made for us. But this is also probably the most typical sauce for this recipe. So I hope you enjoy this. Then, let's get started. Here are the ingredients for hamburger steak. For the meat, it's quite common to use in Japan minced beef and pork meat mixed, because it just kind of gives a little depth to the flavor. But if you can't eat pork for a religious reason, then you can of course make it with just beef meat. Or some people prefer just with beef meat, that's also delicious as well. I also have an onion. And here I have panko or breadcrumbs. You can use just regular western breadcrumbs, or you can make this panko yourself, like I did in the video of tonkatsu. Or you can just use regular bread as well. And I have a little frying oil. For the seasoning, I have salt and pepper. And then for the sauce, I have soy sauce, tomato ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce. First we're going to make the patty. So I'm using half an onion, because it's kind of small onion. But if you have a big onion, then you might want to use just a fourth of it. So how you want to cut it is that you don't want to take the bottom part off, but instead just the top part. And then peel the skin off. So you want to make sure that you don't take the bottom part off. And then what you do is you kind of make slits like this. But not cutting all the way through, but instead just kind of until that. And then we're going to cut it like this. Then automatically you have very small pieces. And once it gets close to the bottom, what you can do is you kind of turn it on this way, and then cut it this way. And then on the side, like this. And you're just left with a small piece. And that's that. So there are some recipes where they fry this very lightly to kind of caramelize it. I'm a bit too lazy for that, so what I usually do is just heat it up very lightly in the microwave for about like a minute or so. So once you see that the pieces are kind of half see-through, then this is good. Now let's make the patty. So you can use like a bowl or something, but I usually like to make it in a pot like this because it has a handle, and they tend to be a little deeper. So I'm going to put in here the meat, and then the onions. Then here about 3 tablespoons of breadcrumbs. And then just mix it. So this is very important to mix it with your hands, because it's very important that the meat pieces kind of get really sticky together, otherwise they can break out when they get overcooked. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. So here you want to put in about a pinch of salt, also some pepper. So the patty is finished. Now I usually make like two out of these. And when you're making a patty, what you want to do is you want to kind of slap on your hand like this. This is going to get the air out of the patty. Otherwise when there's some air inside, then it can break when you're grilling it. And how you want to shape the patty is, of course, up to you. But try to make it quite thin, like this. Don't try to make like a really big piece. And how we usually do it is kind of like a round oval like this. So you want to make it thin like this, about 1 centimeter thin, and make sure it's got a neat shape. And the second one as well. Get the air out. If you make this too thick, then it'll take too much time, and then you might end up having like a very burnt surface and uncooked in the middle. So you want to make sure that you got a pretty good thin patty. So this is finished for the patty. I'm going to let it rest in the fridge for about 10 to 15 minutes, one, to let the breadcrumbs soak up the juice from the meat, but two, also to make it firm by cooling it so that when you fry this on a frying pan, then the shape will stay. So it's been about 15 minutes now, I've taken the patty out of the fridge, and let's fry them. I'm going to turn the heat to medium. And here I'm going to put in about 1 to 2 teaspoons of frying oil. Any frying oil will do. So once the pan is heated, then I'm going to put in the patty. So try not to break the shape. So after about a minute or so, let's see the other side, oh yeah, pretty good, this one, yeah, it's looking pretty good. And also after about a minute, I'm going to flip again, yeah this is looking good, I'm going to flip the other side. So once the surface has gotten pretty well seared, I'm going to turn the heat to low, then I'm going to put the lid on and then cook like this for about a minute or so on this side with the lid, the inside will get cooked through steaming. And then after about a minute, I'm going to flip to the other side again, oh yeah, it's looking good, oh yeah, perfect. And then put the lid back on, and then cook for another minute. So yeah, another minute has passed, let's see the other side, oh yeah, looking good, oh yeah, looking very good. And you see how it's kind of rounded up, it's got thicker, and when you touch them, you can see that it's actually not quite cooked all the way through, because when you touch them, you can kind of see that it's still soft inside. But that's okay, because I'm going to make the sauce right in here, and then we're going to cook this hamburger steak in the sauce. And here what I'm going to do is I'm going to get rid of a little bit of this oil, because if you use this oil, it'll be a bit too oily, so I'm going to soak part of the oil with a paper towel like this, and also you want to try to get rid of these small pieces of burnt onion, because this will give a little bitterness to the flavor. So you don't want to take all the oil, because that's also the juice, but you want to try to get a little of that oil out. So like that. And then in this frying pan, I'm going to make the sauce, and here I'm going to put in 3 tablespoons of ketchup, and then here, 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, and then 2 teaspoons of soy sauce. I'm going to mix this up, put it on the other side of this, like this. I'm going to turn the heat to medium, and then put the lid back on, and cook in a medium heat for about another minute. Then, when you push this, so you can see that it's not soft inside, so this is finished, and this here, it's a little soft inside, so I'm going to cook for another 30 seconds or so. So, another 30 seconds, you can see the patty doesn't sink in, so this is also both finished. I'm going to turn the heat off, and I'm going to put this on a plate. Then this is finished, let's eat. Itadakimasu! Okay, oh, let's eat. So, the hamburg steak is really soft, so you can break it up with your chopstick like this. Oh, it looks so delicious. Itadakimasu! Mmm! Oh, this is just amazing. Mmm! Totally delicious. Oh, the sauce is just so amazing. Mmm! And the sauce just matches the rice so perfectly. Oh, my God. Mmm! Totally delicious. So savory. So, there's a phrase in Japanese, which is a compliment for any dish. With this dish, I can eat endless bowls of rice, because for Japanese people, any dish is a side dish for rice. And this hamburger steak is so delicious, and the sauce just goes so well with the meat and the rice. So perfect. Mmm! This sauce matches the broccoli also. Mmm! Oh, it's just delicious. With this, I need to get the second bowl of rice. So, excuse me for that. Oh, this is so delicious. Mmm! Oh, this is so, so delicious. So, there's no wonder why this is the most loved food of all children in Japan. And you can also make this and put it over curry rice, and then you have hamburger curry. And that's also very delicious. Mmm! So delicious. Oh, this was so totally savory. Oh, so delicious. Gochisousamadeshita. Oh, that was totally delicious. So, this hamburger steak is so delicious, and it's actually very easy to make. And also, it's very, very difficult to fail. Maybe except for either cooking it too much or cooking it too little. The timing thing may be a little bit difficult to tell when it's really finished. But after a couple times, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. And so, I really urge you to give this a try. I hope you like what you saw, and I look forward to see you in the next video. Bye.