Vol. XXVIII · The Cuisine of Japan Plate 8 of 11tempura, 天ぷら, batter, 衣, ice water, low-protein flour, frying temperature, oil temperature drop, batch size, kakiage, かき揚げ, prawn, ebi, sesame oil, tentsuyu, crisp, greasyHT

Tempura.

Drop a handful of cold prawns into a small pan of oil and it falls by twenty degrees. The batter, instead of setting crisp, soaks up oil.

Tempura batter (衣) is the extreme of a thin batter (XXVI.7): low-protein flour stirred into egg and ice water with chopsticks, a few strokes only, lumps left, kept cold and used at once, so little gluten forms and the batter stays thin. On hot oil the batter's water flashes to steam and escapes through it, leaving a lacy, crisp, pale-gold shell that protects the food inside, which steams gently in its own moisture. Ingredients are dried well and dusted with flour so the batter clings; prawns are cut on the underside so they stay straight; vegetables are sliced thin enough to cook in the time the batter takes to crisp.

Oil temperature is everything (IX.6, IX.7). Vegetables fry at about 160–170 °C, slowly enough for sweet potato or pumpkin to cook through; seafood at 170–180 °C, quickly, so it stays moist; kakiage (かき揚げ), a fritter of shredded vegetables and small shrimp, at about 170 °C. Each cold, wet piece added takes heat from the oil, and a crowded pan drops so far that the batter soaks up oil before it sets. So a tempura cook uses a deep pan of oil, adds a few pieces at a time, skims the floating batter bits (天かす) between batches and waits for the oil to recover. The workshop loads the pan.

Below: the temperature of the frying oil when the batch of battered food you choose is added to the volume of oil you choose at the temperature for the ingredient (stove bench, oil bath), and how the tempura will turn out.

What you will learn
Workshop
Stove bench: rapeseed oil in a pan on a 3 kW gas burner (course values), held at the set temperature, then a batch of battered food at 8 °C, 85 % water, added; lowest oil temperature in the next three minutes. Outcome (teaching): within 10 °C of the set point crisp; down to 150 °C acceptable but oilier; below that soggy and greasy.

Cold batter, hot oil, few pieces

In the stove model 100 g of battered prawns dropped into 2 L of oil at 175 °C pull it down by about 3 °C — a tempura cook's batch — while 300 g at once drops it by about 29 °C, and in only 1 L of oil by 37 °C: well into the greasy zone. A deep pan with plenty of oil, and four or five pieces at a time, is the whole secret.

Tempura for 2: dry 8 prawns (peeled, tails on, cut across the underside), slices of sweet potato, aubergine, shiitake and shiso leaves; dust them with flour. Heat 2 L oil (part sesame oil for aroma) to 165 °C for the vegetables. Mix 1 egg yolk with ice water to 200 mL, add 100 g cake flour all at once and stir a few strokes with chopsticks, lumps left; keep the bowl on ice. Dip and fry 4–5 pieces at a time, 2–3 minutes for vegetables; raise the oil to 175 °C for the prawns, about 1 minute. Drain on a rack, not paper, and serve at once with grated daikon and tentsuyu (dashi 4 : soy 1 : mirin 1, warmed) or with salt. Never leave hot oil unattended (IX.8).

At the stove

Fry three pieces of battered vegetable, then put in ten at once. Compare the batter of the first batch with the second.

Edo-period tempura was street food, fried at yatai stalls by the roadside, partly because the city banned deep-frying indoors for fear of fire; diners ate it on skewers, dipped in a shared bowl of sauce.

Terms

衣
The tempura batter: cold, thin, barely mixed.
天かす
Bits of fried batter skimmed from the oil.
かき揚げ
Kakiage: a tempura fritter of shredded vegetables and shrimp.
天つゆ
Tentsuyu: dashi, soy and mirin dipping sauce.
Tempura: ice-cold, barely mixed, low-gluten batter; oil at 160–170 °C for vegetables, 170–180 °C for seafood; a few pieces at a time in plenty of oil, so it stays within about 10 °C. Drain on a rack, serve at once.

Sources

  1. S. Tsuji, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, Kodansha, 1980 (rev. 2006).
  2. A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.