Last week I made J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Korokke (Japanese Potato Croquettes) from his The Wok cookbook.
Kenji notes that any filling ingredients can be omitted or additional ones included. Since my daughter is a vegetarian, and the recipe as-is includes ground beef, I asked her which of the recipe’s filling ingredients she wanted to include. She wanted potato-only Korokkes, so I made half the batch according to the recipe and half potato-only.
Peeled and chunked baking potatoes are boiled until tender. Then they are drained and allowed to cool and dry.
Ground beef is stir-fried in a bit of oil until cooked, then a mixture of minced onion, garlic, and carrots are added and stir-fried until soft and any liquid has evaporated. I hardly saw any liquid from these ingredients. A bit of is added and then it’s taken off the heat.
The now-cooled potatoes get roughly mashed and seasoned, and then the meat and vegetables are folded in. I weighed the mashed potatoes and moved half to a separate bowl for the plain korokke.
Kenji instructs to form the mixture into 4-ounce “computer mouse” shaped patties. I was able to get four for the plain and five with the mixture. These patties are then refrigerated for fifteen to thirty minutes.
The chilled patties get dredged in flour, dipped in egg, and then coated in panko bread crumbs. Mostly this went okay, but I had one patty in each batch that split in half in the process, needing to be re-formed and then re-battered. I couldn’t tell which ones those were in the end result, so it must not have been a problem having a little extra flour, egg, and panko in the patty.
The breaded patties are deep fried. Kenji says to fry “only as many as you can fit in a single layer (4 to 6 patties)” at a time. The plain batch fit fine. I got all five of the mixed batch in, but it was crowded. They’re fried until crisp and golden brown, then salted and served with tonkatsu sauce.
These turned out really well. The plain ones came a out a beautiful even golden brown. The ones with additional items in the mixture had some dark spots on the outside that I think were bits of the vegetable mixture getting extra brown in the oil. They were very hot fresh out of the oil. My son didn’t care for them (he seems to only like potatoes in french fry form). My daughter, a potato lover, enjoyed them. Megan said, “what’s not to like?” which is very true. Hard to go wrong with fried potatoes.
Kenji says they can be eaten “hot, at room temperature, or chilled.” We all agreed they were best fresh. Leftovers were fine, but not nearly as good without the crispy exterior.
I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.