Tempura – the Ins & Outs

Name: Tempura – the Ins & Outs
Cuisine: Japanese
Ingredients: You can make tempura with a variety of seasonal fresh vegetables, fish and seafood – some of my favourites are: broccoli, aubergines (eggplants), mushrooms, onion rings, peppers, deveined prawns (shrimp), small fish fillets, pumpkin, okra, sweet potato slices and squid. By the way, chicken, pork and beef are considered too heavy for tempura.

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Nikkei Cuisine

By Luiz Hara

Published 2015

About

The classic ‘batter-fried’ food of Japan, tempura was introduced to the Japanese table by the Portuguese in the 16th century. When making tempura, there are three important rules to observe:

1 ingredients must be fresh

2 the oil should be at a constant temperature

3 a good batter is a lumpy one.

Ingredients

Super-Fresh Ingredients

You can make tempura with a variety of seasonal fresh vegetables, fish and seafood – some of my favourites are: broccoli, aubergines (eggplants), mushrooms, onion rings, peppers, deveined

Method

Getting the Temperature Right

In terms of the right type of oil for tempura, I suggest pure sunflower oil blended with toasted sesame oil – I normally add 3 tablespoons of sesame oil to 2 litres (3½ pints/8 cups) of sunflower oil. Sesame oil is very strong and should not be the dominant flavour in tempura. Similarly, animal fats or olive oil are too flavour