Tempura batter in a soda siphon/whipper

[_john]

I tried to carbonate some tempura batter in order to make it more crispy today. I made tempura batter as I usually would 1:2 ratio of four and cold water with an egg yolk in it. Then I put the batter in my ISI whipper and charged it with one co2 cartridge. Then I let it chill for 2 hours and tried frying some things with the batter extruded into a bowl. The results were not what I was expecting. The batter came out as a foam which I then used to fry some vegetables. When the batter was crisped up all the bubbles had become craters and absorbed oil like a sponge. I tried stiring the foam to get rid of the larger bubbles but had silimar results.

Has anyone had good results using carbonated batters? I feel like it was way too carbonated to get results similar to tempura made with commercial tempura flour that has baking soda in it.

[KennethT]

I find it works much better to use nitrous chargers rather than CO2. It can also help to add vodka to the batter tomake it extra crisp.. And rice flour.

[mm84321]

What temperature do you usually fry vegetables for tempura at?

[janeer]

I just make my batter with a beer. or you can use club soda

[Merkinz]

I use a mixture of cornflour, regular flour, baking powder and trisol for the dry ingredients and water with vodka for the wet ingredients. I run this through a syphon but using nitrous rather than CO2. syphon it into a bowl that in spall quantities to keep it fresh when dunking the vegies in. Comes out wonderfully crispy and light. I actually did this on the weekend for guests.

[_john]

Unfortunately I can't get nitrous chargers in Japan as far as I can tell. Tempura is usually fried at 180°C. Merkinz, what is the texture like? Does it have crators left by the larger bubbles or is more like a traditional tempura?

Usually when you make tempura you mix the batter before frying every time. It is quite time consuming so I would like to get similar results in less time and I thought that using a siphon might work.

[slkinsey]

You really do need to use N₂O. CO₂ will not give the results you want.

[ScottyBoy]

+1 that is your problem. Hope you can find some charger over there!

[Merkinz]

john, the texture was crisp, lacey with quite a fine matrix. Very few to no larger bubbles. I happened to take some photos during my early attempts, it'd be fair to say that my technique and results have improved quite a bit with a little practice. In the first photo you can see the batter being extruded from the siphon - notice the bubbles are very fine and it has an airy foam texture not a bubbly texture. Also note that the bigger bubbles you see there are a user error and aren't usually there. The second photo is of my early results, I hesitate in posting this photo cause my results really have improved.

How does it compare to traditional techniques and results? I'm really not qualified to answer this as although I often eat out at and love Japanese restaurants I'm a little dubious of the quality of these places we have here in New Zealand. Plan to travel to Japan next year and hope to experience the genuine article! I hope this helps.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Merkinz (log)

[adey73]

Would a commercial Cream Whipper (i.e one that just pumps air mechanically) work?

[_john]

Thanks for the pictures. The texture in the pictures looks very similar to my results. I have a few smuggled nitrous chargers so I can do some more experiments.

[haresfur]

I was looking for a recipe for siphon batter and came across this thread and several pages from ISI. On one they compare using CO2 and N2O cartridges and came to the conclusion that CO2 was marginally lighter.

p.s. my fusion Hungarian sweet capsicum peppers stuffed with herb-oil marinated feta and beer-batter deep fried rellenos turned out pretty well except I had trouble getting the batter to stick to them and to the prawns I was doing.