Recipe: Make Japan’s Iconic Okonomiyaki With a Tokyo-Born Author’s Home-Style Spin

At Japan’s okonomiyaki counters, you always get dinner and a show. Sitting before a hot iron griddle, you can watch a chef prep, grill and flip your savoury Japanese pancake – or even do it yourself. With this recipe, from cookbook author and former chef Maori Murota, you can enjoy the same theatrics at home.

It’s straight from Japanese Home Cooking (Mini), Murota’s sleeker, more focused version of her 2022 cookbook. (The collection was originally inspired by the home-cooked dishes she grew up eating in Tokyo.) Murota’s take on the savoury Japanese staple is loaded with prawns and oysters and bound together with grated yam for extra fluffiness.

If you’d prefer to skip the seafood or swap something in, Murota encourages you to experiment. “Feel free to invent your own version of this recipe,” she writes. “In Japanese, ‘okonomi’ means ‘as you like’ and ‘yaki’ means ‘grilled’. Restaurants offer a wide choice of toppings.”

Plus, further down, find Murota’s recipe for a lighter, soy-based mayonnaise to serve it with. “Its taste is so similar (better, in my opinion) to that of a traditional mayonnaise that people hardly notice the difference, but it is much healthier and lighter,” she writes.

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Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) by Maori Murota

Serves 4

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 10 minutes per okonomiyaki

Ingredients

200g pointed cabbage (or white cabbage)

2 spring onions

100g peeled prawns

100g yam or potato

16 oysters

200ml water

2 eggs

200g plain flour

½ tsp salt

1 handful katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)

4 tbsp sunflower oil

Garnish

Okonomiyaki sauce (or tonkatsu sauce)

Mayonnaise or soy mayonnaise (scroll down for Murota's recipe)

4 generous pinches katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)

A few dill leaves (optional)

Method

Cut the cabbage into thin strips, spring onions into thin rounds and prawns in half lengthways. Grate the yam. Open the oysters and remove them from their shells.

In a bowl, mix the grated yam or potato, water and eggs. Add the flour and salt and mix. Stir in the cabbage, spring onion and katsuobushi (crumbled between your fingers). Add the prawns and oysters, then mix.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Pour in 1 tbsp oil and wipe the excess with a paper towel. Pour a quarter of the batter into the hot pan. Cook for about 3 minutes. Turn the okonomiyaki over, cover and cook for 5 minutes. Flip the okonomiyaki back and cook for another 2–3 minutes, uncovered. Repeat the process until all the batter is used. This will make four okonomiyaki.

Serve the okonomiyaki on individual plates with a generous amount of sauce spread on top. Add the mayonnaise. Sprinkle with some katsuobushi and decorate with a few dill leaves.

Notes

To replace the tonkatsu sauce: in a small saucepan, mix 4 t bsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 tbsp ketchup, 1 tbsp mirin and ½ tsp soy sauce. Heat over low heat, stirring until the sauce thickens.

Vegan version: Replace the seafood with 150g mushrooms (oyster, shiitake, etc.) sauteed in 1 tbsp oil and seasoned with ½ tsp salt and 1 tbsp malted or nutritional yeast. Add an additional 100g yam.

Soy mayonnaise by Maori Murota

Makes 120g mayonnaise

Preparation time: 5 minutes, plus 2–3 hours chilling time

Ingredients

50ml soy milk with no added sugar or flavouring

60ml (¼ cup) neutral vegetable oil

1 tsp Dijon mustard or seeded mustard

2 tsp rice vinegar

1 pinch raw sugar

2 pinches salt

Method

Mix all the ingredients together with a spoon in a wide-mouth jar. Close and leave for 2–3 hours in the refrigerator. Mix with a hand blender. If the mayonnaise is too runny, leave to cool for an additional 2 hours to thicken.

Notes

This is the perfect dressing for potato salad or for tartare sauce. It will keep for 1 week in the refrigerator.

Images and text from Japanese Home Cooking (Mini) by Maori Murota, photography by Akiko Ida (except p. 106–109, by Pierre Javelle). Published by Murdoch Books. Available now for RRP $29.99.