Okonomiyaki
お好み焼き
Osaka's cabbage pancake — flour, dashi, a pile of cabbage, and whatever you like, finished with sauce and mayo.
Recipe by I Want Some Food · Reviewed by the editorial kitchen. Native name preserved: お好み焼き.
0 people cooked this in the public kitchen yet. Kitchen-tested by I Want Some Food. Not a purchased rating.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 15 min
- Rest
- None
- Total
- 35 min
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Spice
- No chilli
- Cost
- Cheap nightUnder $8 USD · indicative, not a store price
About
Okonomiyaki means grill what you like. The Osaka style is a cabbage-heavy batter, cooked like a thick pancake, layered with pork belly if you want it, and painted with a Worcester-ish sauce, mayo, and katsuobushi that dances. This is that pancake, not the Hiroshima layered noodle mountain. Watery cabbage is the silent saboteur. Salt the shreds briefly and squeeze, or the centre stays raw while the outside burns. Mix the batter only until it just holds; overworking makes a bouncy cake. Medium heat, a lid for a minute if the pile is thick, then patience before the flip — a broken pancake is still edible, just harder to sauce evenly. Keep mayonnaise and the brown sauce off the pan until plating or they scorch. Drain any bean sprouts well.
Ingredients
Ingredients
- Cabbage, roughly chopped300 g
- Wheat flour80 g
- Egg2 large
- Dashi80 ml
- Pork, thin belly slices (optional)80 g
- Mayonnaise30 ml
- Katsuobushi (optional)3 g
- Neutral oil30 ml
Scaling multiplies the written quantities. Baking still prefers a scale.
Steps
Step 1
Mix flour, egg and dashi to a thick batter. Fold in cabbage and spring onion. It should look like too much cabbage. That is correct.
5 minStep 2
Heat oil in a pan. Spread half the batter into a thick round. Lay pork on top if using. Cook 4–5 minutes, flip carefully, and cook until the centre is set.
12 minStep 3
Stir soy, sugar and ketchup into a shiny sauce. Paint the pancake, zigzag mayo, shower katsuobushi. Repeat with the rest.
Adapt this recipe
The canonical recipe stays intact. Personal versions are labelled. Serving changes are maths, not AI.
Adaptations · 0 / 15 used. Resets 10 October.
Substitutions
Pork → Prawns or just cabbage
Vegetarian bowls skip the flakes too if you need them to.
Tips
- Tenkasu (tempura scraps) in the batter is the shop crunch.
- A lid for 2 minutes helps the middle cook without burning the face.
History & culture
Osaka home tables and teppan restaurants. Kids pick toppings. The sauce is as important as the cabbage. Osaka still treats the teppan as a table, not a stage: you sit, you wait, you argue about squid. Home electric plates in rented flats do a quieter version of the same meal. Tourist spots in other cities sell a thinner disc and call it done. Locals will tell you the cabbage-to-batter ratio is the personality test. There is no prize. There is only whether you wanted dinner or a snack with extra sauce.
Savoury pancakes have older cousins. The modern okonomiyaki is postwar Osaka, flour and cabbage when meat was short. Savoury griddle cakes followed cheap wheat into industrial cities. Occupation-era shortages made cabbage and flour look like a meal, and the sauce industry gave it a bottled identity. The later tourist split between regional 'styles' is real enough at the teppan, but it is also marketing. What persisted is the idea that a household could feed several people from one hot plate without a formal kitchen brigade.
Regional variation — Osaka style: mixed batter. Hiroshima style layers noodles. We are writing Osaka.
Provenance: Editorial adaptation.
Questions about this recipe
Answers taken from this dish's times, amounts, swaps and tips — not a chatbot.
How long does Okonomiyaki take?
35 min all in — 20 min prep, 15 min cook. Cook and rest follow the method. Leftover storage and optional extra waits are not included.
How many does it serve?
The recipe is written for 2 pancakes. Scale the ingredient list on the page if you are cooking for a different number.
How hard is it?
Medium.
How spicy is it?
No chilli.
What allergens should I watch?
This recipe is labelled for Wheat, Eggs, Fish. Labels are informational — check the packets in your kitchen. This is not medical advice.
Does it fit a diet?
The published recipe is labelled Dairy-free, Nut-free.
What does it cost to cook?
Cheap night — about Under $8 USD, as a grocery budget for this recipe, not a restaurant price.
What equipment do I need?
Frying pan, Mixing bowl.
How much salt do I put in?
This recipe does not list salt as its own ingredient. Saltiness comes from Soy sauce — 2 tbsp. Taste at the end rather than adding a number we did not write.
How much soy sauce?
2 tbsp of Soy sauce.
How much sugar?
1 tbsp of Sugar.
What can I use instead?
Pork → Prawns or just cabbage. Vegetarian bowls skip the flakes too if you need them to.
Any tips from this recipe?
Tenkasu (tempura scraps) in the batter is the shop crunch. A lid for 2 minutes helps the middle cook without burning the face.
Can I use an air fryer?
This method is not written for an air fryer. The core technique on the page still applies.
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