National Dishes of the World

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Tempura
Photo: Yaco*, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

main dish

Tempura

天ぷら (tenpura)

Prawns and vegetables in a feather-light, crisp batter, quickly fried and eaten with tentsuyu sauce and grated radish.

Eaten in: Japan

Prep
30 min
Cooking
25 min
Total
55 min
Servings
4

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About the dish

Tempura is prawns, fish and vegetables dipped in a very light batter of flour, egg and ice-cold water, then fried briefly in hot oil until coated in a thin, lacy, crisp shell. Frying in batter is thought to have been brought to Nagasaki in the 16th century by Portuguese traders and missionaries, and in the Edo period tempura became popular street-stall food. The batter is mixed only briefly with chopsticks and left lumpy so that the gluten does not develop. It is eaten straight away, dipped in tentsuyu sauce of dashi, soy sauce and mirin with grated daikon radish, or sprinkled with salt, and also over rice as tendon or with soba and udon noodles.

Main ingredients

  • prawns
  • seasonal vegetables
  • wheat flour
  • egg
  • ice-cold water
  • oil
  • tentsuyu sauce
  • daikon radish

More: Wikipedia (pl) Wikipedia (en)

Recipe

Tempura

https://foodmap.ominuvo.com/dish/tempura

Ingredients

4 servings

4 servings

Method

  1. Bring the dashi, soy sauce and mirin to the boil and set aside.

  2. Score the underside of each prawn a few times and straighten it gently so it does not curl in the oil; pat everything dry.

  3. Heat the oil in a deep pan to 170–180°C.

  4. Just before frying, beat the egg with the ice-cold water, add the flour and stir with chopsticks for just a few strokes – the batter should stay lumpy.

  5. Dust the ingredients with flour, dip in the batter and fry in small batches: vegetables for 2–3 minutes, prawns for 1–2 minutes, until the batter is pale and crisp.

  6. Drain on a rack or paper, skimming crumbs of batter from the oil between batches.

  7. Serve at once with the warm tentsuyu, to which everyone adds radish and ginger.

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