Tempura
Tempura are vegetables, seafood, poultry and many other foods coated in a light batter. This dish can be made from most products, but the most popular ones are shrimp, zucchini, eggplant, mushrooms and chicken. As this dish comes from Japanese cuisine, sushi in tempura is also quite a popular meal to make. I personally had the opportunity to taste such sushi and frankly speaking, it tasted sensational. After coating the vegetable or seafood in tempura batter, the whole thing is placed in hot oil and fried until crispy.
Whether the tempura will be crispy and melt in your mouth after frying depends mainly on the batter. Preparing the batter for tempura is easy, but when making it, you need to remember about a few very important things. The first is flour. The batter can be made with wheat flour type 500, but the best will be cake flour, which has a lower concentration of gluten. Cake flour is light and less sticky than type 500 flour. You can only use wheat flour, but it is also worth adding a little starch to it. It can be either corn starch or potato starch. The starch will slow down the formation of gluten in the batter, making the final tempura crunchier.
Another important element of a good tempura batter is the temperature of the ingredients used, because the colder the better. The water and eggs should both be from the fridge, and the water can be placed in the freezer for a few minutes before adding it to the batter. It is also worth remembering that in the case of this batter, the less you mix the better. The batter preparation process should be quick and efficient, and even small lumps may remain in the batter. The batter should not be made in advance, but only at the moment when you are going to use it.
Vegetable oil is the best for frying, and the products which you tend to coat in tempura batter must be sprinkled with flour first. Sprinkling in flour will help the batter stick to the product and will prevent if from falling off once the frying is done. I encourage you to make vegetables and other products in tempura. Currently, the season for zucchini is ongoing, and as you know, this vegetable is sensational in tempura. Just cut it into sticks or rings, coat it in flour, then cover it with batter and deep fry it. I recommend you the following recipe for the perfect tempura and I wish you a tasty meal.
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Ingredients for tempura.
- 100 g cake flour *type 405
- 80 ml very cold sparkling water
- 20 g potato starch
- 120 ml very cold still water
- 1 small egg or 1 full teaspoon of mayonnaise
How to make tempura.
Sift the cake flour together with the potato flour into a bowl. Whisk the egg with a fork and when ready, add it to the flours in the bowl. Also pour in sparkling water along with still water, and quickly combine all the ingredients with a whisk or spoon.
Good to know when making tempura.
If you want to replace the egg with mayonnaise, be sure to choose mayonnaise, which is made with eggs. You can find the recipe for homemade mayonnaise HERE.
I put the bowl in which I make the tempura batter in the freezer for 10 minutes before using it, thanks to which the ingredients of the batter will keep their temperature a little longer.
Before coating with the batter, vegetables, seafood or poultry should first be washed, thoroughly dried with a paper towel, sprinkled with flour, and only then coated in the batter. After each coating of the ingredients, I put the bowl with the batter in the fridge and take it out only when I roll the next products.
Do you like seafood in tempura batter? If so, try our recipe for Tempura prawns.
