Name: Okonomiyaki (Savory Pancake)
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 2 servings
Cuisine: Japanese
Ingredients: 300 g Cabbage; 100 g Pork belly; 2 stalks Green onion; 1 tbsp Cooking oil; 1 cup Flour; 0.75 cup Water; 2 Eggs; 0.5 tsp Salt; 3 tbsp Okonomiyaki sauce; 2 tbsp Mayonnaise; Bonito flakes; Aonori

Ingredients

2servings

Cabbage · finely shredded, about 1/4 head300 g
Pork belly · thinly sliced, or bacon100 g
Green onion · chopped2 stalks
Cooking oil1 tbsp
Batter
Flour1 cup
Water · or dashi stock0.75 cup
Eggs2
Salt0.5 tsp
Toppings
Okonomiyaki sauce · or tonkatsu sauce + ketchup3 tbsp
Mayonnaise2 tbsp
Bonito flakes · katsuobushi, generous
Aonori · green seaweed flakes

Steps

Shred the cabbage as finely as you can; chop the green onion.
⏲ 4 min
Whisk the flour, water, and salt into a batter, beat in the eggs, then fold in the cabbage and green onion until just coated — do not overmix.
⏲ 2 min
Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Mound the batter into a thick round and lay the pork belly slices flat over the top.
⏲ 1 min
Cover and cook until the bottom is golden brown.
⏲ 5 min
Flip once so the pork side is down, cover again, and cook through. Do not press it down.
⏲ 5 min
Slide onto a plate, drizzle with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise in zigzags, and pile on bonito flakes and aonori.

Variations

Seafood okonomiyaki: Swap the pork for plenty of squid and shrimp.
Cheese okonomiyaki: Melt a slice of cheese over the batter.
Hiroshima style: Layer yakisoba noodles onto a thin crepe of batter.
With grated yam: Fold grated nagaimo yam into the batter for extra fluff.

Tips

Shred the cabbage finely so the batter binds and stays tender.
Mix the batter gently — overworking makes it tough.
Do not press it down after flipping — pressing squeezes out the fluffiness.
No okonomiyaki sauce? Fake it with 3 parts tonkatsu sauce + 1 ketchup + 1 Worcestershire.

More detail and the reasons why (3)

By weight this is a cabbage dish with just enough batter to bind it. The mixing step gives it away: mix only until no dry flour is left. Finely shredded cabbage is around ninety per cent water held inside cells, and the flour, water and egg are there to coat the shreds and stick them to each other. Shredding fine is a rate control rather than neatness — size is a cooking decision (knife skills), and more cut surface means the cabbage wilts and bonds within the time the pancake has, while coarse cabbage stays rigid and the cake falls apart on the turn.
Which is why it cooks under a lid, and that makes it a different operation from other pancakes. Some dishes add no water at all and cook in what the ingredients release — a seal, low heat, and the ingredients' own water (dry heat and moist heat). In aloo gobi no water goes in, and the lid is the whole cooking method. A covered okonomiyaki is that architecture on a griddle. The underside browns on dry heat while the cabbage steams itself from the inside, and the pork belly laid on top is being cooked by the same steam until the flip puts it on the metal.
"Do not press it" here is not bindae-tteok's reason. There, pushing with the turner drives out the air and compacts the crumb, and the structure genuinely is batter. Press this one and what gives way is the cabbage. The cells release their water into the surrounding batter, and a griddle that was steaming the inside now has to boil off a puddle instead — dense where it was meant to be open, and wet where it was meant to be browning. Milanesa presses as hard as it can for the opposite reason: there the thing under the turner is a coating with nothing inside it to crush.

The basics behind this dish

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