Use a deep frypan, or a saucepan with a flat bottom, so that the temperature of the oil will be even. Now that you’re armed with the knowledge of tempura-making, I hope you’re ready to fire up some delicious tempura at home! In addition to chikuwa, this seaweed-flavored tempura batter can also be used with other ingredients. Something with a bland or neutral taste would work best so that the aromatic aonori or aosa stands out. Here are my suggestions:

Tensumu (Tempura Shrimp Rice Balls)– A Nagoya specialty, Tensumu is rice balls stuffed with shrimp tempura. There are also a number of theories surrounding the etymology of tempura, which adds to the dubiety. Some sources believe the word tempura comes from ‘tempero’, which means ‘seasonings’ or ‘spices’ in Portuguese, while some cited the definition from Kanji (Japanese-Chinese characters). I used medium prawns about 40g (1.5 oz) each before removing head and shell. Any smaller than this would not be recommended. If quite large, you could reduce the number to two per serve and the cooking time would be longer. It is extremely important to keep the batter cold. I measured the ingredients and then left them in the fridge overnight, even the flour.You can basically make tempura with a wide range of fresh ingredients, with the most common options that include seafood, mushrooms, and root vegetables. There are also local tempura menus all over Japan that feature seasonal ingredients unique to the area. Seafood Besides eating them straight off as a dish, you can also serve tempura as a topping or a side to accompany many other dishes like sushi and noodles. Use vegetable oil or canola oil. You could also add a small amount of sesame oil to add flavour to the tempura if you like. Professional tempura chefs do mix sesame oil to the frying oil. Olive oil is not suitable.

The tempura-style batter is said to have been brought to Japan by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century, during the Muromachi period. However, as the cooking method of ‘deep-frying with flour batter’ was already established in Japan beforehand, the origin of tempura can be somewhat disputable.

You can substitute enoki mushrooms with shiitake if you like. Then you won’t need yaki nori to tie the stems together. In the case of shiitake mushrooms, it will look prettier if you do not cover the entire mushroom cap with the batter, so that the colour will show when fried. For vegetable tempura, starchy root vegetables such as sweet potato, Kabocha squash, and lotus roots are most ideal. Other popular ingredients such as Japanese mushrooms (shiitake and oyster), eggplants, okra, shiso leaves, and shishito peppers are also suitable for frying in the batter. In rural Japan, people even fry up wild edible plants and shoots like dandelion and fiddleheads for tempura. Open the flower petals carefully and (using a small spoon or a piping bag filled with the cheese mixture) start to fill the inner cavity with the cheese filling, taking care not to over-fill. I bought a small eggplant about 12cm (4¾”) long, 4cm (1½”) wide. If you can find shorter eggplants, you can use two and skip the step to halve the length, ie. the second cut in my recipe. Many of the tempura batter recipes on the internet use bicarb soda or baking powder in pursuit of making the batter crunchy when fried. Traditional batter is just a mixture of flour, egg and water.

Tempura is one of the most famous dishes of Japan. Deep fried seafood and vegetables coated in tempura batter are renowned for the delicate crispy coating that is quite different to other deep fried foods around the world. Do not overcrowd the frying pot with ingredients – As a rule of thumb, only half of the oil surface should be covered with ingredients. So, deep fry in batches. A great way to consume as much seaweed as you’d like while lowering your risk is to swap your iodized table salt for high-quality sea salt or Kosher salt instead. What are the benefits of seaweed for skin? Keep it super cold so that it will slow down the activation of gluten. Also the batter scatters when fried which creates the light bubbly surface that tempura is known for. Ideally, the oil should fill up to ½ of the pot. The minimum oil you need in a frying pan is 1 inch deep. The more oil you have, the more ability the oil will have to sustain its ideal temperature throughout frying. Oil TemperatureIn Japan, Tempura (天ぷら) is serious stuff. Japanese chefs would spend years mastering the technique of tempura frying. And home cooks will themselves in front of the hot oil in their tiny kitchens. All for the food we so love. In my recipe, I used prawns, eggplant, enoki mushrooms, carrot and shiso (紫蘇 or しそ, Japanese perilla) leaves because I happened to have these vegetables in my fridge. The success of your tempura is in the batter. To achieve a crispy texture, it’s very important to minimize the gluten formation in the batter as much as possible. Tempura Batter: (flour : egg + water = 1 : 1 by volume)

It will take years of highly skilled training to make tempura like the tempura chefs do, and you may not be able to make them look like the professionals’ (I certainly can’t!), but you can still make delicious tempura at home. I will show you how, but first, let me explain a few key things which will help you make good tempura. Ingredients Do not mix the batter too much – just draw the number 8 in the batter a several times and don’t worry about powdery lumps of flour remaining in the batter. With light crispy edges that is bursting with umami seaweed flavor, these fried fish cakes are so fun to eat! Once you take a bite, it’s hard to stop. No wonder they are such a favorite beer food in Japan.

Ingredients

Hungry? Find the detailed tips and techniques in each of the following tempura recipes! 1. Shrimp Tempura When juicy plump shrimp, thinly sliced Japanese sweet potato, creamy eggplant, and fragrant shiso leaves get dunked in batter and deep-fried to light, irresistible crunch, you know you’re going to have some really good meal. This recipe is quite long, but only because I have tried to explain the preparation of each ingredient and the frying method in detail. Once you understand it, it’s actually pretty simple and fast to cook. Do not overmix the batter. When you mix the batter too much, it activates wheat gluten and it makes the batter heavy and dough like when fried; and