Тонкацу: Японская свиная котлета в панировке

Japanese dish of deep fried pork

is a Japanese dish that consists of a breaded, deep fried pork cutlet. It involves coating slices of pork with panko (bread crumbs), and then frying them in oil. The two main types are fillet and loin. Tonkatsu is also the basis of other dishes such as katsukarē and katsudon.

The word tonkatsu is a combination of the Sino Japanese word ton (豚) meaning "pig", and katsu (カツ), which is a shortened form of katsuretsu (カツレツ), an old transliteration of the English word "cutlet", which was in turn adopted from the French word côtelette.

Tonkatsu originated in Japan during the Meiji Era in the late 19th century, a dish derived from a French dish known as côtelette de veau, a veal cutlet coated in breadcrumbs and fried in a pan with butter. European katsuretsu (loanword/gairaigo for cutlet) was usually made with beef; the pork version was created in 1899 at a restaurant serving European style foods named Rengatei in Tokyo, Japan. It's a type of yōshoku—Japanese versions of European cuisine invented in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—and was called katsuretsu or simply katsu.

Either a pork fillet (ヒレ) or pork loin (ロース) cut may be used; the meat is usually salted, peppered, dredged lightly in flour, dipped into beaten egg and then coated with panko (bread crumbs) before being deep fried. Tonkatsu is then sliced into bits and served, commonly with shredded cabbage. It is most commonly eaten with a thick Worcestershire style sauce called tonkatsu sauce