Classic Tempura
A light, crispy way to enjoy vegetables and seafoods
Ingredients
- 4 shrimp
- 4 slices kabocha squash
- 4 slices sweet potato
- 4 slices eggplant
- 6 green beans
- 3/4 cup cake flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup water with 3-4 ice cubes
- oil for deep frying
Instructions
- Cut vegetables into 1/4″ thick slices. Make diagonal cuts on the shrimp to help straighten.
- Put cake flour, baking powder, salt in a medium bowl and whisk well.
- Add ice water into flour mixture and stir with chopsticks (not whisk) about 10 times. It’s OK to have a lot of lumps in batter. (Unflavored sparkling water is an alternative to still water.)
- Heat oil to very high temperature (375F).
- Carefully easy vegetables and shrimp in batter, and deep fry until they float and are cooked through.
- Do not overload your frying pot as the oil temp will drop too much. Make sure you have lots of room between your battered items. Check temp now and again to be sure it does not drip too low or get too high.
- Lay your golden friend pieces on an absorbent towel to drain and serve hot with a dipping sauce.
Notes
You can use this tempura better to batter and fry sage leaves, crab sticks, zucchini spears, thin carrots, and zucchini blossoms.