Korokke~ Korokke~

What’s a korokke? Its a croquette, a potato cake coated with panko and fried. Korokke is the japanese name for these little fried delights. I was first introduced to this food item through a old japanese film during a high school field trip. The film had these hard working immigrant farmers stumbling home drunk through the corn fields and singing, “korokke korokke….” The reasoning is that meat was scarce for these families so the wives stretched it by putting some into these potato cakes. The mashed potatoes filled the stomach while they still had the benefit of the meat.

Nowadays you see these fried potato cakes as a snack or meal item. Its a pretty easygoing dish, you can mix anything with the mashed potatoes, depending on preferences. You normally see the cream and vegetables one in the freezer section of some grocery stores. CoCo Ichiban Curry House (a Japan based curry house) has cream croquettes in one of their curry dishes. Kaiten sushi restaurants (conveyor belt type) like Genki sushi and Kuru Kuru sushi have these on their lower price menus. I think Kuru Kuru even has several types of croquettes besides the usual vegetable (peas, corn, carrots).

Due to an extra amount of potatoes in my pantry, I thought this was a good chance for me to try out making croquettes. I used leftovers and staples in my kitchen for the filling, if you want to try something different, google croquette to get more ideas.

These are rough measurements and you can adjust to your taste but normally there’s more mashed potatoes to keep the entire croquette together.

What I used:
1 lb mashed potatoes (russet)
1 cup diced ham
1 small onion
1/2 cup corn
salt & pepper to taste
flour to coat
1 egg
panko to coat
vegetable oil to fry

Cube and boil your potatoes until a chopstick can pierce the cubes easily. While the potatoes are boiling, dice and mince up your ham and onion.

I used leftover ham that I had sitting in my freezer and diced it up. Make sure its defrosted before you start cooking.

Mince your small onion. By this time (about 10-15 minutes later) your potatoes should be done boiling. Drain the potatoes and let the water drain for a few minutes in a colander. Mash the potatoes.

In a fry pan, put a little oil into the pan and sautéed the onion until they become translucent and have a slight golden color. Add the diced ham and fry until the ham has darkened a bit. Add the corn and toss a few times and take it off the heat.

Let the ham, onion, and corn mixture cool down a bit before mixing it with the mashed potatoes. Taste and add salt & pepper to your taste. I didn’t put a lot of salt in mines as the ham was salty already. I did put quite a bit of ground pepper but that’s just me.

*Edit! Since I didn’t fry all of the potato on the first day that I made these, I was able to snap additional pictures to fill out the rest of this entry.

Pour oil into a wok or pot and start heating it up. Don’t go above medium to heat. While it heats, form the patties.

Using your hands, form flat patties. The size and shape is really up to you but flat patties tend to cook easier than odd shapes. I made oval patties that were about 1/2″ in thickness and about 2″ x 3.5″ in width and height. I tried to keep the patties thin so I didn’t have to put a lot of oil in the pan.

Lightly coat the patties with flour. I used high-gluten (bread machine) wheat flour for mines because it was all I had on hand. I used the last of my all-purpose flour on pancakes a few mornings ago. The high-gluten flour worked just fine.

Coat the patties with the beaten egg. I let the patties sit a little bit on one side before I flipped it so that the egg would be able to soak through the flour a bit.

Dredge the egg coated patties through the panko bread crumbs, pat and coat them well. A nice thick crust means more crunch plus it’ll keep the oil from soaking into the potato patty and potentially hitting those corn bits that can explode due to moisture and hot oil. Guess how I found that out…

Check the temperature of the oil by putting the tips of wooden chopsticks into the oil. If the oil starts bubbling around the wooden chopsticks, the oil is ready. No bubbles means it needs more time to heat, be patient. Too low of a temperature and the oil will soak into the croquette. When the oil is ready, gently drop the croquettes into the oil. Fry until golden brown, flip and repeat.

Let the finished croquettes drain on a paper towel lined plate.

I made two different sizes, the regular one for dinner and snacking at home and the mini ones for me to pack into my lunch bentos.

I halved one of the croquettes with my dad. The sauce I put on top is the Bulldog tonkatsu sauce that I used in my yakisoba post. There’s an amusing story attached to this half of the croquette. I had halved and sauced each half of the croquette and left my half on the kitchen table while I went into my room to upload these pictures onto Flickr. When I came back out I noticed my dad had an odd look on his face. My first horrifying thought was that the croquettes tasted awful. When I asked my dad if it was that, he said that wasn’t it and that it tasted great. It was then that I realized that the look on his face was of amused guilt. The man had stolen my half of the croquette while I wasn’t looking, lol.

This is just a side thing but while I was peeling the potatoes I noticed my vegetable peeler made some pretty thin shavings. On a lark I peeled an entire potato with the peeler with the intention of frying up the shavings after the croquettes. After I “peeled” it, I rinsed it to get rid of the excess starch and layed out the chips on paper towels to dry them throughly. Wet chip hitting hot oil isn’t a good thing. Though it wasn’t the best way to get even chips, I thought it came out pretty well with kosher salt sprinkled on top. Just like those store bought bag chips.