Tempura

[Susan in FL]

I have looked through some recipes, but none really jumped out and grabbed me. I can't imagine that any would beat what some of you guys might suggest... Can you direct me to a recipe or tell me your ideas on the best way to make tempura vegetables? Now that we have the deep-fryer, we are in the mood. Thanks!

[torakris]

For tempura batter you need 1 cup flour, 1 cup ice water and 1 egg yolk

mix the ice water and egg yolk together and then add the flour all at once. Stir very gently just to work some of the flour into the liquid, it should be quite lumpy and a little runny. Dip the vegetables briefly before deep frying.

I like to add a little sesame oil to the flavorless oil I deep fry with.....

My favorite vegetables are sweet potatoes, okra and shiso leaves.

[Hiroyuki]

My favoriates are squashes and "kaki-age". There are a lot of variations of kaki-age. My wife usually uses onions, carrots, and dried shrimp.

[piperdown]

Yeah, Tempura batter is very simple. It's the consistency that sometimes gives me a problem. I use Cake flour, and the cold water is important. I usually use an ice bath to keep the batter cold. I've occasionally added some beer to the batter instead of water, but I like both ways. The bubbles of the beer keep the batter light, but cold mineral water can do the same.

Sweet potatoes are still my favourite tempura veggie, but I also realy like Asparagus. You need really thin shoots though. Red Peppers and Cauliflower is really good too.

[Jason Perlow]

In addition to Tempura, you might want to try its Indian cousin, the pakora. Pakoras have cumin spice in the batter mixture.

Cauliflower, broccoli, squash and potatoes make great pakoras.

http://www.indianchild.com/vegetable_pakora_recipe.htm

http://www.whats4eats.com/recipes/r_ap_pakora.html

The flour (besan) that they use is made of chickpeas.

[helenjp]

Even in Japan, we sometimes add potato starch or cornstarch to tempura batter to avoid high gluten levels. You might want to try that, as US flour has fairly high protein levels, I think. All cornstarch, on the other hand, makes the batter brittle.

Another way to avoid developing the gluten is to mix as little as possible, even to the point of having lumpy batter.

With meats and some fish, I like to add a little ao-nori (green flakey seaweed) to the batter.

Frying needs to be done rapidly so beware of adding too much cold food to the oil at once - definitely less than half the surface of the oil.

Hope you're enjoying your experiments!

[Hiroyuki]

Another tip is the temperature.

For sea foods, the appropriate temperature is 190 to 200 degrees (centigrade).

For vegetables, it is lower, 160 to 170 degrees.

***

torakris, do you use egg yolk only, not whole egg?

[torakris]

I prefer an egg yolk only.

Helen, thanks for mentioning about the flour, I sometimes forget flour in Japan andflour in the US is different. Japanese don't really have an all-purpose flour, they have a "strong" flour (high protein) and "weak" flour (low protein) and it is this weak flour that is used in tempura, the prtein content is usually about 8% so similar to US cake flour.....

[Carolyn Tillie]

I'm a huge tempura fan -- growing up, my mom would tempura eggplant as an appetizer. For years, I didn't know what French Fries were...

I especially like the yams and sweet potatoes as well and have marveled at the occasional restaurant that do less-seen vegetables like peas and asparagus and mushrooms.

Leaves are great too. When I do seaweed, I cut it into 3-inch strips but I only batter half of it. The whole strip is fried, but there is a nice contrast to having half of it battered.

Variety is the key...

[Hiroyuki]

Talking of leaves, may I suggest young leaves of mugwort. They are delicious!

[Jinmyo]

Actually, using soda water is interesting. It makes the batter light with unpredictable gifts of crunchy/foamy areas.

I like to do asparagus tempura in the spring. The thin guys. hicker guys I peel first, then fry the shavings and use as a garnish.

[mudbug]

Susan,

I went thru a search for the best tempura a couple of years ago. Inspired by Ebisu (the restaurant) in San Francisco which had the lightest, most delicate and delectable tempura I've ever had. Excellent for more delicate things like slivers of zucchini, leafy greens, herb leaves like sage or basil, shrimp, squid, etc. The result is just a bit thicker and crunchier than tissue paper.

Thru lots of research and many attempts, I found that the secret is in the combination of rice flour, a bit of regular flour to add a hint of body, and cold club soda... my favorite type of tempura ever... look here for recipes.

Let us know what you end up trying.

Edited May 21, 2004 by mudbug (log)

[Susan in FL]

Thank you all for the recipes, ideas, and tips. I'll report back, after our first try. Using cold club soda or beer appeals to us, so we'll probably include one or the other. Any additional comments are still welcomed!

[Quish_Quash]

Going along simular lines as the soda, I use beer. For my recipe, it's equal parts AP flour and beer, usually something alittle sweeter like a red. My favorite is to do summer squash and pea pods, serving them with a light, honey vinagrette for dipping. I've always had good reviews, just make sure the beer is flat, and the veggies are dryed with a paper towel so the batter sticks.

[Susan in FL]

We did The Tempura Thing tonight, and it was delicious. It didn't turn out looking like we expected it to -- it wasn't as big and puffy -- but damn, it sure did taste good! For the batter we used two cups of rice flour, one teaspoon of cumin, and "whisked in enough cold club soda to make it look similar to pancake batter." Being experimental, we also added one egg yolk for flavor. That could be the reason it wasn't so light and airy. We did an ice bath, to keep the batter real cold until deep frying, and the vegetables were asparagus, cauliflower, sweet potato, baby yellow squash, sweet onion, mushrooms, basil leaves, and sage leaves. We had this with grilled skewered tuna and swordfish. Next time, we will leave out the egg yolk, just to see if that makes it more puffy, but the flavor is going to be hard to beat. Thanks, everyone.

[BaconEater]

Hi All,

I'd really like to revive this rather old thread. I'll briefly mention I had a very good experience with vodka tempura batter recently, and want to share and discuss ways to make amazing tempura. I'll post a much longer item on it if there is interest. So, if at least one or two people are keen to revive this, please speak up

 

The vodka tempura batter recipe, I found online and then have made various tweaks that resulted in some very delicious tempura oysters and fish.

 

I'm interested to hear about other peoples' advice... and just engage in a fun chat about it.

 

Cheers!

BE

[FeChef]

9 hours ago, BaconEater said:

I'm interested to hear about other peoples' advice... and just engage in a fun chat about it.

Use your batter to make Tenkasu (tempura crunchies) then add them into the batter before dipping your food. It adds that crunchy texture you get at japanese hibachi restuarants.

[shain]

Here's a video of a technique to achieve a similar result to what @FeChef mentioned, though yours sounds easier.

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Uspw2Yll4&t=248 

 

[FeChef]

21 hours ago, shain said:

Here's a video of a technique to achieve a similar result to what @FeChef mentioned, though yours sounds easier.

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Uspw2Yll4&t=248 

 

Thats a pretty cool technique all though i would probably be afraid of burning my fingers.

[AlaMoi]

there are dozens and dozens and dozens of dozens of recipes for tempura.

keeping in mind that the theory of some "original" or "authentic" recipe for a crunchy deep fry batter is patently absurd - it predates "documentation" . . .

 

it's basically what you like.  and liking different batters/results for different dishes is perfectly okay!

 

several posters have mentioned - and it was my AH HAH! moment:  rice flour.

rice flour does a tempura body good....

[BaconEater]

On 12/18/2020 at 3:59 AM, AlaMoi said:

 

several posters have mentioned - and it was my AH HAH! moment:  rice flour.

rice flour does a tempura body good....

 

I will have to try that. I have been using a prepackaged "Tempura flour" which works pretty well.

[BaconEater]

Here is the longer post as promised, about my Vodka Tempura Batter experience:

 

-----

I love trying to make new types of food, but I keep it pretty simple. My goal is to have a repertoire of fairly easy to make dishes, that taste incredible. Recently I decided to give tempura ago. Here in Bangkok there are a couple of sublime tempura places. I went to one of them twice, and was extremely impressed. Their batter is thin, crisp, and very sophisticated, and the ingredients they use (the cooked items, and the 6 salts they provide for dipping - and there's a certain matching that they recommend too) are really top notch. Not cheap, though.

 

This is a bit of a long story but the end result was a really great tempura... hope it isn't too long!

 

I had trouble making a really good batter and then I found a vodka tempura batter recipe.

https://www.marthastewart.com/326812/vodka-tempura-batter

 

Without posting it in full, I do think that I've changed it somewhat, but I really don't know how much change justifies posting it as a new recipe. It only has 3 ingredients!

 

Problem I had: the recipe makes a lot of batter and then you don't know what to do with it. After cooking up a couple serves of food, there's still about 60% left! And this was after I already tried to reduce the quantities of vodka and flour by about 30-35%. Also, I use a packaged tempura batter which is different from what's in the recipe. And somewhere down the track I might use duck egg instead of chicken egg... I think it would be fair enough to link the old one and then detail my fairly different new one, but I'll wait for experienced user advice here before I do. I put the vodka in the freezer until it's really cold, maybe sub zero. The recipe says "ice cold" - technically that's 0 degrees but let's not split hairs :). As written, the recipe made quite good tempura with oysters and fish.

 

But guess what... I put the leftover batter mix in the fridge and it stayed there 2 days, and then I was wanting to cook again. The batter looked bad - the flour basically filled most of the bowl and looked kind of thick and gluggy, and the liquid was a thin 1-2m sheen on top of that. But I didn't want it to go to waste, and the fish I was making was really cheap (but actually very nice) tilapia. So if I screwed it up, I wouldn't feel too bad. I decided to whisk the batter mix fully, which goes against the usual advice for tempura batter, which says lumps are good. I stirred it vigorously until it was smooth. Then I put it in the freezer.

 

I prepped the fish, and then when it was dusted in flour, I brought out the very cold batter mix and used it to cook the fish. I don't like overusing oil so I actually shallow fry but perhaps a little deeper than true shallow. But certainly not enough to submerge the fish. The fish is sitting in oil that comes up half way or a little higher once 3 pieces of the fish is in the (small) pot, raising the oil level. Well... it came out AMAZING. Even better than the 1st day with the fresh batter.

 

I think the fact that I whisked the batter mix fully wasn't the real plus. That was probably a minus but it wasn't noticeable. What I think made the difference is this:

 

The entire batter mix had been in the fridge for 2 days and then went into the freezer before cooking. So the whole thing was really really cold. According to the original recipe, you're using ice cold vodka but you're mixing in room temperature flour. My kitchen ain't cold, coz I'm in Bangkok! So I think adding the pretty warm flour raised the temperature and counteracted the low vodka temperature somewhat (and you want batter mix to stay cold while cooking).

 

So I think another tweak I will make to this recipe is to keep the flour in the fridge. And then when you make the batter mix with subzero vodka, you are also using cold flour. And then once you mixed it, if you don't immediately use it, or maybe on purpose for a little while, put it in the freezer so it's all super cold. Then bring it out when ready to cook, and use it with the food. Might even make sense to bring SOME out into a bowl, leaving the remainder in the freezer, and bring out more as you need it, so every batch benefits from really cold batter mix.

 

Something about the particular batter / fish characteristics on this 2nd try: it just seemed so easy to know when it was perfect and ready. I let the batter go just a little bit gold, or very slightly brown, and removed the fish, and it was perfectly done. Crispy outside, moist and flaky inside.

 

I would like to be able to just do a TLDR version which is the final version of the recipe that I think would totally rule, but I will wait until I'm sure to not breach copyright before doing that.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers!

[Duvel]

On 12/17/2020 at 9:59 PM, AlaMoi said:

keeping in mind that the theory of some "original" or "authentic" recipe for a crunchy deep fry batter is patently absurd - it predates "documentation" . . .

I need to object here when specifically talking about Tempura. The dish originated in Nagasaki in the 17th century by combining Portugese fritters with Japanese vegetables. It was refined in the Edo area (modern Tokyo), leaning out the batter (no egg) and adding ice water to minimize gluten development. Processes and recipes are well documented.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Duvel (log)