A coloring page of katsudon, the bowl of rice topped with a breaded pork cutlet that has been simmered with onion in sweet soy broth and set with beaten egg. The drawing shows a footed bowl banded with stripes, the cutlet cut into slices and half-buried in soft folds of egg, with a sprig of mitsuba laid on top. Free to download and print for care homes, day centres and family use — no registration needed.
🗣 Conversation Starters — for care activities and family time
Do you like katsudon? Is there a particular shop’s version you remember?
Did you ever eat a cutlet the night before an examination or a match?
Loin or fillet — which do you prefer in a tonkatsu?
Have you ever made katsudon at home?
Where did katsudon come from?
Nobody has settled it. Sanchoan, a soba shop near Waseda University in Tokyo, is the name that comes up most often and is usually dated to the 1910s; shops in Ueno and Asakusa have made claims of their own. Treat all of them as the accounts that circulate rather than a documented first bowl. The regional versions are worth getting right, because they often get garbled. The egg-bound bowl in this picture is the national default. The cutlet served over rice under a dark demi-glace sauce belongs to Okayama, not to Osaka. The version dipped in a Worcestershire-style sauce with no egg at all belongs to Fukui, to Komagane in Nagano and to Aizu in Fukushima. Nagoya has its own, with red miso.
Why do people eat katsudon before an exam?
It is a pun and nothing more. Katsu, the word for the cutlet, sounds exactly like the verb katsu, meaning to win, so a bowl of it before an examination or a match is treated as a good omen. That is the whole of the reasoning — wordplay, not a nutrition strategy. A large fried meal does sit heavily, which is why the custom is usually attached to the evening before rather than the hour before, but that is common sense and kitchen talk rather than medical advice.
What cut of pork is used?
Loin or fillet. Loin — rosu — carries a rim of fat along one edge and stays juicy; fillet — hire — is leaner and milder, and is the cut usually offered to anyone who finds loin too rich. The coating goes on in a fixed order that is easy to get backwards: flour first, then beaten egg, then panko last. Coarse fresh panko gives the ragged, spiky crust drawn along the edge of each slice in this picture, while the fine dry kind gives a smoother, sandier one. Frying in lard, or in oil with some beef fat added, deepens the flavour, which is why many cutlet shops still do it.
