Tempura

Ingredients

• Large prawns12
• Sweet potato, aubergine, pumpkin, pepper — sliced500 g
• Plain flour150 g
• Cornflour50 g
• Egg — cold1
• Iced water250 ml
• Dashi for the sauce200 ml
• Soy sauce50 ml
• Mirin50 ml
• Grated daikonto taste
• Oil for frying1 l

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Score the prawns three times on the inner curve and straighten them slightly, so they do not curl into rings in the oil.

   10 min

2. 2

   Combine the dashi, soy and mirin, bring them to the boil and take them off: this is tentsuyu. Serve it with grated daikon.

   5 min

3. 3

   Heat the oil to 180 °C. Only when it is ready do you mix the batter — not before.

   8 min

4. 4

   Beat the cold egg into the iced water, tip in the flour and cornflour and stir with chopsticks for five or six strokes. Leave the lumps.

   2 min

5. 5

   Dust the pieces in dry flour, dip them in the batter and lower them in three or four at a time. Fry ninety seconds to two minutes.

   15 min

6. 6

   Drain on a rack, never on paper. Between batches skim the floating scraps of batter out of the oil: they burn and taint the flavour.

   3 min

About the dish

Tempura batter is made with iced water and stirred with chopsticks for a few seconds. Lumps of flour are supposed to remain: developed gluten gives a chewy crust instead of a crisp one.

The difference in temperature between batter and oil should be as large as possible. Ice-cold batter in 180 °C oil throws its water off as steam instantly, and the coating comes out lacy and hollow.

Make the batter in small amounts and not in advance. Ten minutes standing and it warms up and loses the entire point.

Worth knowing

• — Mix batter for one or two batches only. Make fresh for the next: it is faster than it sounds and the difference is not close.
• — The cornflour lowers the gluten content of the flour. It is the same trick as using rice flour, only easier to find.
• — No salt in the batter: tempura is salted after frying or dipped in sauce. Salt in the batter draws water out and softens the crust.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

24 g

Fat

26 g

Carbs

48 g

More from Japan

• Miso soup — A soup of dashi and miso that takes ten minutes. Miso must never boil: boiling takes out both the aroma and the point of it.
• Katsudon — A breaded pork cutlet finished in sweet-salt broth with egg and slid onto rice.
• Shoyu ramen — Broth, tare and oil — three separate things assembled in the bowl rather than cooked together.