My First Kurokke

It's been a long while since the last time I do deep fry and true enough my deep frying skill shrinks so much compare to before (lack of practice off course)... So, this time I made kurokke/クロッケ (Japanese Croquette). Made the basic one because I have no confident to pull those fancy creamy kurokke LOL. So, I pulled up the recipe from the net (here). Yes, as the recipe suggests, it's easy, true, it's just my deep frying skill now sucks that my kurokke look like... below, not as shinny as I want them to be.

So, what's kurokke? For Indonesian, it's basically Japanese perkedel LOL... that's the basic one. The difference Indonesian use egg for coating, Japanese use pankon (bread crumbs). I didn't really follow 100% of the recipe because I don't follow recipe, that's all LOL...

What you need:

750gr potatoes - peeled, cut, steam for 20min and mash them

100gr minced beef

1/2 leek - julienned

30 gr grated cheese

Salt & pepper - as needed

Cake flour - as needed

1 no egg - for breading

Pankon - as needed

How to:

1. Cook beef and leek until soft and cooked, seasoned it with salt & pepper, set aside.

2. Add #1 and cheese into mashed potato, mix them until well mixed

3. Mould the mixture into patties. 70gr each will make about 9-10 kurokke.

4. Coat them with cake flour then do the breading station --> egg --> pankon

5. Deep fry them until golden brwon

Point from the website:

1. Coating them with cake flour supposed to prevent the kurokke from exploding when deep fried

Point from me:

1. Don't be stingy with oil. Pankon fried faster than the softer bread crumbs so deep frying has to be fast. If your oil is not deep enough and only cover half of your kurokke, the side will get burnt fast and you'll have kurokke with black sides.

2. Don't add butter into your mashed potato, it'll become too soft and not easy to be fried. It makes the kurokke tastes nicer though. Decision, decision haha...

3. If you don't have tonkatsu at home, you can mix tomato sauce, mirin and Worcestershire sauce. It should do the job. Or try it with mayo and lemon for different flavor.

Enjoy!