If you are a Japanese food lover and try to make a Japanese dish at home, you might already have found tons of recipes available online. However, how can you tell that the dish you made actually tastes the way it is supposed to? How do you know that you have cooked it correctly? Here is when our master chefs come in to help you. In our course, they will give you personalized feedback. They resolve such worries for passionate cooks eager to achieve authenticity and tastier results. This time, we are introducing to you how to make tempura. You might already know what tempura is, and there are many tempura recipes available online. However, tempura is not a dish that is easy to cook.
What Is Tempura?
The tempura was a local dish that originated in Japan’s Edo, the former name of Tokyo, about 350 years ago as street food. As cooking techniques have developed, this street food has become more like sophisticated food. Today, while people can enjoy the dish as an easy meal, it is often seen on the menu alongside sushi at a high-end restaurants.
Some people say that tempura is similar to fritters because they are both fried in oil. However, tempura is indeed close to steamed food. Whereas fritters are cooked thoroughly by the oil’s temperature, tempura coated in flour is instantaneously heated with a high-temperature oil, their inherent water content, and residual heat. That is why the coating is crispy while the freshness of the ingredients remains. This cooking method makes the dish unique to Japanese cuisine.
Tempura is also versatile because it can be a vegetarian or vegan dish by substituting some ingredients for the batter and sauce. This is one of the reasons why it is popular among people with food allergies and restrictions.
How to Make Tempura
Tempura is a simple dish consisting of only a few ingredients – eggs, water, flour, and oil. This does not mean that it is an easy dish to make. Because it is such a simple dish, you cannot mess with the ingredients.
If you get this part correctly, you can bring out the best of the ingredients. If you choose the ones that are not fresh or suitable for the dish, it is difficult for you to master how to cook tempura properly. Make sure that you understand the following principles.
Recommended Ingredients
Recommended ingredients for tempura are ones with a light taste and less water content because they can create a great flavor and texture with flour. This implies that meat with a rich flavor is rarely used for tempura. Recommended ingredients are as below:
Vegetables: eggplant, eryngii (king trumpet mushroom), shiitake, arugula, shiso, broccoli, carrot, small onion (Pecorus), young corn, green asparagus, zucchini, okra.
Seafood: shrimp (carp shrimp), white fish (such as sea bass and red snapper), salmon, scallops, squid.
Cooking Method
The cooking method is simple yet has some pitfalls to avoid. Here, let’s quickly go over how to make tempura with a few tips you will want to remember.
Suppose that you have prepared all the vegetables/seafood and batter. The next step is to deep-fry the ingredients. After getting the oil to the appropriate temperature, dip the ingredients in the batter and add them to the pan. Make sure to put them in different parts of the pan to keep some distance between them to prevent them from sticking together. When deep-frying, scoop up the excess batter flakes diligently. These excess batter flakes will cause oxidation of the oil, which lowers the quality of tempura. Also, do not touch the batter right after adding them to the pan. Wait until the butter gets hard, or the coating starts coming off. When the sizzling bubbles get smaller and the sound of frying becomes higher-pitched, it means they are cooked.
As we said earlier, you may find it easy to cook tempura. However, each step, from choosing the right ingredients to serving the final dish, has some things to look out for. Also, even though the basic methods of cooking tempura are as simple as above, deep-frying vegetables and fish require different techniques. We explain the detailed steps and techniques in our course, which are worth checking out.
What are the Typical Mistakes People Make?
As we mentioned above, tempura is a simple dish. However, there are a lot of people who struggle to cook this dish as they wish. Daniel, one of our very passionate students, learned how to make Tempura with our course. His tempura already looked good; however, our master chef pointed out some mistakes just by looking at the pictures he had sent us. Some of the major feedback Daniel received was:
1. The batter should have been mixed less so that the coating would be thinner.
One unique characteristic of tempura is its crispiness. To create this aspect, you do not want to mix the flour completely with water and eggs. Rather, you can mix it quickly until there are slight clumps because it results in a slightly uneven batter. This creates a three-dimensional and crispy texture. We can tell that this is different from the Western-style fritters fried in a uniform batter.
2. The oil temperature should have been stable every time he added a new ingredient to the oil. (The course also includes a lesson on how to check oil temperature easily.)
For a lot of chefs who fail to create the perfect tempura, handling temperature is one of the tricky parts. Keep in mind that the recommended temperature is 170°C (338°F) for vegetables and 180°C (356°F) for fish in general. This optimal temperature is crucial, and it should be consistent every time you add an ingredient to the oil.
By starting to fry at a high temperature, the batter instantly gets hard and locks in the moisture and umami of the food. In other words, if the temperature is low at the beginning of the deep-frying process, the flavor in the food will come out before the batter gets hard, and the texture of the batter will deteriorate. Contrarily, if the temperature is too high, the ingredient will get burned. That is why you should pay extra attention to the oil temperature every time you add a new ingredient.
With these detailed personalized instructions on how he can improve his tempura, Daniel could make the dish with perfect coating, which was crispier than his first attempt.
As you can see from his case above, our courses have a system where our students can send us their photos and videos to get tips and advice from our master chefs.
Master the Art of Tempura Making!
In general, mastering Japanese cuisine is not all about the cooking part. Tempura is not an exception, and you will have to consider all the steps from choosing the right ingredients to presenting the dish.
In our Tempura Masterclass course, you will be able to learn not only the knowledge on how to make tempura, but also useful information, including how to choose fresh seafood, how to avoid food poisoning, how to make tempura sauce, and plating. With the information above, you will perfect tempura dishes for your guests to enjoy to their fullest!
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