This Japanese bar snack also makes for a great camping meal

A common item on the menus of Japanese bars known as izakaya is tonpeiyaki, which is a cross between an omelet and classics of Japanese cuisine like okonomiyaki and monjayaki.

When seeing it piping hot and all prepared, it looks rather daunting for layman cooks like our writer Masanuki Sunakoma to attempt to make. Still, having not been to an izakaya in a while for obvious reasons, he decided to give it a shot, and checked out a recipe from one of his favorite culinary YouTubers Stay-At-Home Dad Ken.

▼ The Stay-At-Home Dad Ken video recipe in full

Ken’s videos often show how to cook outdoors, so at first Masanuki was surprised to find tonpeiyaki among his videos. But because of its simple ingredients and easy clean-up, it lends itself to camping surprisingly well.

Let’s take a look at how it’s made.

Ingredients

● Pork Belly – 80 grams (4 strips)

● Cabbage – 100 grams (2 or 3 leafs)

● Pizza Cheese – 30 grams

● Eggs – 2

● Salt and pepper

● Okonomiyaki sauce

● Mayonnaise

● Green Laver

● Salad Oil

First, shred the cabbage into thin strips. You can also cut the cabbage core into thin pieces but it should be done separately.

Then cut up the pork into bite-sized pieces. Other meats would probably work well too, but beware that “ton” is Japanese for pork, so you’d potentially be going against the name tonpeiyaki.

After that, crack two eggs into a bowl and beat them. That’s all the prep work done. Now let’s get cooking.

Fry the pork in medium heat first.

When the meat is about 80 percent cooked, add in the cabbage. If the core is used, add that first, and then the leaves.

When the cabbage begins to shrink, add in enough salt and pepper to suit your taste.

Then, move everything into a bowl and clean the frying pan for the next stage.

With the cleaned pan back over medium heat, add in the eggs and lightly stir it to prevent sticking.

When the egg has half-hardened, add in the cheese.

Then add in the meat and cabbage from before.

Arrange all the ingredients so they’re in the center and then peel off the egg from the bottom of the pan to make sure it’s not sticking.

Now for the climax. Cover the pan with a plate

And flip it over!

Then tuck in the sides of the fried egg to wrap around the ingredients.

Next, drizzle on some okonomiyaki sauce.

And then some mayo.

It looks like the bottle had an air pocket that squirted Masanuki’s mayo in a rather unpresentable glop. Luckily, just as how pencils have erasers, mistakes are the reason tonpeiyaki has green laver. He added a generous portion to camouflage his unsightly mayonnaise distribution.

And we’re done.

Although there were a lot of steps, none of them were even remotely difficult and, mayo-malfunction notwithstanding, it looked quite professional in the end. The taste was outstanding too, and Masanuki could swear it was just like what he had at the izakaya. Granted that was months ago and his memory is fuzzy, but it was really delicious any way you cut it.

It’s worth noting that this recipe is largely to get that izakaya taste, but there’s a lot of room for leeway in the recipe. BBQ sauce is generally a good substitute for okonomiyaki sauce for those who can’t get it outside of Japan, and you’d probably get some good results with something like oregano instead of green laver.

No matter what you add, it will certainly complement a cold beer on these scorching summer days. So, be sure to give this recipe a try and then go tell all your friends that you know how to cook Japanese bar food.

Source: YouTube/兼業主夫ケンのキャンプ飯チャンネル

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