All About The Tempura

The tempura is a Japanese dish of fish, seafood or vegetables, breaded and fried in abundant oil.

The batter

The batter should be very light and is prepared with cold water and wheat flour. Sometimes water is used to accentuate the sparkling lightness of the dough. You can also add eggs, baking soda, starch, oil and / or spices. The tempura is always mixed in small quantities and with sticks for a few seconds. Use cold water and leave lumps in the mixture to come out very spongy and brittle once fried. One way to keep the batter cold is with the addition of ice, or placing the container in a large bowl with ice. Do not mix the dough too much as it would activate the gluten in wheat and make flour mixture into the frying chewing gum.

You can find a specially formulated tempura flour and in almost any supermarket. This is usually a light meal (with a minimum amount of gluten), sometimes with yeast.

Frying

Covered slices or strips of vegetables, seafood or fish in the dough and then fried briefly in hot oil and very rich. Vegetable oil or canola oil are the most common, although traditionally fried in tempura sesame oil. Many of the specialty restaurants still use sesame oil or tea seed oil, and it is believed that these oils contain compounds that help produce a light and crispy dough.

By using shellfish, squid, or thick-skinned watery vegetables such as peppers or eggplant, the skin is stretch marks with a knife to prevent the ingredients from breaking during cooking, which can cause severe burns caused by splashing the oil.

The oil temperature is generally maintained between 160 and 180 degrees Celsius, depending on the ingredient. To preserve the natural flavor and texture of the ingredients, be careful not to burn the tempura. The frying times vary from a few seconds for delicate leaf vegetables, and several minutes for bulky or large pieces kakiage.

Finally, the pieces of dough (known as tenkasu) must be removed between different batches of frying, so it does not burn or leave a bad taste in the oil.

Ingredients

Although you can use almost any vegetable, seafood or fish, the most common ingredients for traditional tempura include:

Seafood: shrimp, prawns, scallops, squid, Anago (conger eel), ayu (pezdulce), crab and fish a variety of texture firmeHortalizas: peppers, kabocha squash, eggplant, carrot, burdock, green beans, sweet potatoes, yams, potatoes, Renkonen (lotus root), shiitake mushroom, squash, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and okra.Presentación

The pieces are eaten fried tempura dipping in a sauce or added to other dishes. Often served with grated daikon and eaten hot immediately after frying. The sauce is the most common tentsuyu sauce (roughly three parts dashi, one part mirin, and one part soy sauce). The tempura may also be sprinkled with sea salt before taking or even contain a mixture of green tea powder and salt or yuzu and salt.

...