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Tempura

Do you like crispy Japanese tempura? Tempura is deep fried vegetable or seafood, which is commonly eaten in Japan. If you know some tips, it's not so hard to make delicious tempura at home. All ingredients can be found easily at your local grocery stores. Actually, you can make tempura with almost anything. For example, tempura banana and tempura ice cream are tasty!


List of Ingredients





Common Ingredients for Tempura:
Shrimp / Squid / Green pepper / Eggplant / Sweet potato / Potato / Cabocha (Japanese pumpkin) / Carrot / Shiitake Mushrooms / Renkon (lotus roots)

Basic Steps for Cooking Tempura:

Prepare the ingredients. (Cut into 3/4 inch in thickness. *See Tip 5 and 6)
Make tempura batter.
Heat vegetable oil in a deep pan to 340-350F degree. (*See Tip 4)
Lightly dip ingredients in the batter and immediately fry them until brown. It takes longer to fry vegetables than to fry seafood.
Drain tempura on a rack.
Serve right away with tentsuyu (tempura dipping sauce) or salt. Tempura is best served hot. *Grated daikon radish is a common condiment.
Tips for Making Crispy Tempura:



Recipe



Tip 1: Ice
Use ice water for the batter. This is really important to prevent the batter from absorbing too much oil. (Do not make the batter ahead of time.)

Tip 2: Batter
Try not to over mix the batter and not to coat ingredients with the batter too much.

Tip 3: Frying Order
If you are frying both seafood and vegetables, fry vegetables first. Then, fry seafood. Fry vegetables at 340F degree and fry seafood at 350F degree.

Tip 4: Oil Temperature
To check the temperature of frying oil, drop a little batter into the oil. If the batter comes up right away instead of sinking to the bottom of the pan, it's about 360 F degree. If the batter goes halfway to the bottom and comes up, it's about 340F degree. This is said to be the right temperature to fry tempura.

Tip 5: Shrimp
Make a couple incisions on the stomach side of each shrimp so that it stays straight. Then, pick it up by the tail and dip the body part in the batter. ( Tempura Shrimp Recipe)

Tip 6: Squid
Remove the thin skin and lightly flour it before dipping in tempura batter so that it won't splash much.

Tempura Variations:

Kakiage is round mixed tempura. To make kakiage, mix left over tempura batter and thin strips or small pieces of several ingredients together. Take a scoop of the ingredients in a large spoon and slip them to 340F degree oil. Make kakiage into your favorite size.
(Scallop Kakiage Recipe)
Ten-don (Tempura Rice Bowl): Serve hot Japanese rice in a bowl. Dip tempura lightly in tentsuyu sauce. Place the tempura on top of rice.

Tempura Udon/ Tempura Soba: Boil udon noodles/soba noodles (the boiling time varies depending on the types of noodles) and drain. Heat men-tsuyu in a pan and add the udon/soba noodles. Serve the udon/soba noodle soup in a bowl. Place tempura on top of the noodle soup.
Enjoy cooking tempura!