 The cover of a package I bought |
Other people might call this a Japanese pancake. Either way it’s round and as most people cut it into pie like slices and since it’s more like a pizza in the ingredients department I think pizza is a better description.
Okonomiyaki is usually made from flour, water, eggs and cabbage. The cabbage is chopped and mixed with the eggs, water and flour. To this is added pretty much anything you want. Common things to add would be thinly sliced chopped pork, thinly sliced chopped beef, chopped onions, octopus, squid, mushrooms. Note, like pizza you’d usually pick one or two things to add. You mix it together to make a batter and then you pour it on a grill and let it cook like a pancake. When one side is done you flip it over and cook the other side. When it’s finished you turn off the heat or put it on a plate then you put okonomiyaki sauce on top and usually katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes) and mayonnaise. The katsuobushi is so thin that it waves in the heat coming off the freshly cooked okonomiyaki and so it looks like the top of your meal is crawling.
Here’s an actual recipe although it seems to be missing the katsuobushi. Here are some more pictures from a Japanese site.
At many okonomiyaki restaurants the grill is at your table and you make it yourself. They just bring you a bowl with the ingredients.
 Bowl of ingredients |
You can see the this bowl has corn and bacon in it. Making it yourself allows you to put as much of the extras as you like. The extras being sauce, katsuobushi and mayo. Of course it also means you might over or under cook it and do undercooked the batter might still be wet and overcooked it could be to dry or burnt.
 Ready to eat |
Here is a pretty standard finished okonomiyaki. Yummy!!!! The sauce is kind of similar to a teriyaki sauce being that it’s a little sweet. I can’t really imagine anybody not liking at least a beef or pork okonomiyaki maybe leaving the katsuobushi off if that scares you.
 Cut like this it looks like pizza |
After it’s finished it’s usually cut it up like this which I think is why most English speaking people would call it Japanese pizza.
 Negi Okonomiyaki The flakes on the top are katsuobushi |
As I mentioned there you can put pretty much anything you want in Okonomiyaki. In fact I believe that Okonomi means "as you like" and I know that "yaki" means to cook on a grill or BBQ. The one above looks like it might be Negi Okonomiyaki. Negi means green onions.
 Very small red fish eggs added to the batter |
Just having been flipped, this one has small red fish eggs in it which probably burst as it cooks and end up coloring the batter redish.
 The white things are mochi |
Mochi sticks have been added to this one that has just started cooking. Mochi is made from rice and is often used almost like a cheese in some dishes. Here it will end up melting and have the texture of mozzarella cheese but of course a much lighter flavor. You can buy mochi in slices that look like white american cheese.
Check out this page for more good pictures and here is another good page
I don’t know any good places to get Okonomiyaki in the states. If you know of one please tell me. There is one place in Hawaii at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center called Chibo and is part of a chain that exists in Japan. In the LA/OC area I’ve only heard of about 3 restaurants that serve it and all of them really stink.
feeding milk, man ideal.
