How to cook TEMPURA 🍤 〜天ぷら〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make tempura. So I'm sure a lot of you guys know what tempura is. It's a fried vegetable or seafood, and I'm sure a lot of you think that it's very Japanese. It's actually not. Tempura actually originally come from Portugal. This was imported around 300-400 years ago, during the time when Japan closed the country and banned all the exports and imports, except for Portugal and Holland. Through Portugal we learned this new cooking way of frying. Until that point, Japan had no frying recipes. The name tempura come from Portuguese word temperar, which means to season or to cook. I'm sorry if I'm wrong. Since we learned this technique of frying, we incorporated this in our cuisine and made it our Japanese version of that. And that's the tempura. Then, let's get started. Here I have the ingredients for tempura. Here I have quite a lot of ingredients. You don't have to have all this, of course. These are just kind of typical tempura ingredients. You can just pick a couple of these, or you can also have other ingredients. For the main part, I have here prawns and white fish. I think the fish is perch, but you can pretty much use any fish. You can actually pretty much use any seafood, like calamari or octopus are also good, or any clams. And for the vegetable, I have shiitake mushroom, sweet potato, eggplant, broccoli, and pumpkin. You can also use other vegetables like zucchini, paprika, or asparagus is also good, lotus roots, or if you have shishito peppers, that's also great. There are two ways to eat tempura, one with salt and one with dashi sauce. And for the dashi sauce, I'm going to be using dashi powder, soy sauce, mirin, and sake. If you don't have mirin, then you can easily substitute with sugar. And for the batter, I have an egg, baking soda, and all-purpose flour. And then also a frying oil, any frying oil will do. So let's prepare the ingredients. I'm going to start with the seafood. I'm going to cut these perch in bite-size pieces. And then for the prawns, I'm just going to take the head off. I would assume most people throw away these heads. These are also very delicious, so I recommend not throwing these away. And instead, you can take this head part off like this, this top part off like so. And this part is also very delicious. Don't throw these away. And you can make soup out of this, but I'm also going to fry this as part of tempura. This part, I'm just going to give it a little wash. And the head part, I am going to throw away. For the prawns, I'm going to have to peel them. So purchasing prawns, you want to try to find prawns with the shell, because they tend to start losing their freshness and also the quality of the meat when they are peeled. So I would recommend trying to find prawns with shell, and it's really not that hard to take off the shell from the prawns. And then what you want to do first is that here, the top side, there's intestine. You want to cut in a little bit like this, and then look in here. This doesn't have a lot of intestines. Some don't have any intestines somehow. I don't know why. And here on the top part, I'm just going to give it a slice. Oh yeah, here. So that's the intestine. And if you eat prawns with the intestine, it doesn't taste good at all. Okay, a little bit. I don't know if you can see. A little bit of intestines. Some have a lot, some have very little, depending on the prawns. So there are a couple of things you want to do for the prawn when preparing for tempura. One thing is preparing the tail. This end part, they contain a lot of water inside. If you dip this in hot oil, then they'll splash. So what you want to do is you want to cut a little bit, slightly like this, take that out, and then take out the water like this. So it doesn't splash. So we're going to do that for the rest. So spread out the tail, you want to cut it diagonally like this, and take away the water. Spread out, cut diagonally, and let the water out like this. And the next thing you want to do is you want to make it straight. Shrimps and prawns have muscles on this side, and when they get heated, they cramp up like this. So I'm sure you've seen most of the prawns, they're like curled up. And what you want to do is you want to make kind of incisions, I'd say three or four times like this on the bottom side. And then you want to kind of break up the muscle so that they're straight like this. When they're in this form, then they won't curl up anymore. So I'm going to show it again. Make a couple incisions on the bottom side, and then you want to kind of push it outward so that they're straight like this. And they also look a little bit bigger. Muscle here, one, two, three, four incisions, and then push it outward like this so the muscles are breaking up and they're longer and they're straight. That's finished preparing the prawns. Next we're going to prepare the veggies. So I'm going to take the stem off, and I'm just going to make incisions like this for the shiitake mushroom so that they'll have a little neat form. Of course you don't have to do this at all. I like to do this to make it kind of look nice. These are called kazarigiri, which means decoration cuts. We're just going to cut these into bite-sized pieces. So what you want to do with the broccoli, you don't want to cut it all the way through. You just want to make an incision on the bottom and then split like this. Then you won't have a lot of breaking parts like this. Here I'm not going to use the whole eggplant, just going to cut a couple slices. And also with the sweet potato. And definitely I'm not going to be using the whole pumpkin. All the ingredients are prepared. Let's make the tare, or the dashi sauce for the tempura. What I'll be making is the amount for two servings, so change the amount according to how many people you're serving. In a small pot, I'm going to put in four tablespoons of water, then one tablespoon of sake, one tablespoon of soy sauce, and one tablespoon of mirin. If you don't have mirin, then you can just substitute with one teaspoon of sugar. And one pinch of dashi powder. So like that much. And if you don't have dashi powder, you can make it without dashi powder, it just won't be as savory as with dashi powder, but it'll still taste good. Or if you want to be very authentic, then you can make your own dashi. And here's the link for making the real dashi. That's going to taste much, much better. I'm going to turn this heat to high, and then bring it to lightly to boil, so the alcohol content will vaporize. So this has come to a boil, you want to turn the heat off, and this is finished for the sauce. I'm just going to put it into a small bowl like this, and then let it cool. So let's make the batter. So in a bowl, I'm going to crack in an egg. In here I'm going to put in 200ml of water, which is about 4 fifths of a cup. You can just put in one cup, that's also not big of a problem. And you also want to put in a couple ice cubes into this. I don't quite know why, but they say that the crust will be crunchier if you make it with cold water. So you want to put in one cup of water with the ice cubes. And then beat it. And then in here I'm going to put in also one cup of all-purpose flour. And then in the flour, I'm going to put in a pinch of baking soda. So this will kind of help that the crust will be a little bit fluffier. Like that much. And then, put a colander over it, and then don't put everything, just put like two-third of it. You want to make sure that it'll have good consistency. So here what you don't want to do is really mix it well. If you mix it well, the gluten part of the flour will start making nets, and it'll have like a really sticky dough. That's what you don't want to do. So you just want to kind of very lightly mix it. Like so. It's a little too watery, I'm going to put in a little more. So kind of like this. So you don't want to have it too thick, and you don't want to mix it too well. There are some clumps, that's really okay. So and I really didn't use all the cups. So depending on the temperature, or depending on the humidity, it can a little differ. So you want to make sure that you don't have the batter that's really too thick. This is finished for the batter, let's start frying. So in here, in a pot, I'm going to put in some frying oil. Then I'm going to turn the heat to high. So you want to fry the tempura with about 180 to 200 degrees Celsius, which is about 350 to 380 Fahrenheit. So it has reached about 180, 190, if you don't have a thermometer, then you can just kind of check it with the batter, and then just kind of give it a little drop like this. And then if it comes right away, then it's about 180 to 200 degrees. So in here, I'm going to put in first the things that may take a little bit longer time. So the sweet potato and the pumpkin, drop in. So this is going a bit too high, so I'm going to turn my heat down to medium, depending on the size of the pot, the amount you're putting, you might want to keep it high. So this is looking good. For pumpkin and sweet potato, you want to cook about one and a half to two minutes or so. I'm going to put in the broccolis. So the broccolis don't need to get cooked that long, just about a minute or so is good. Let's cook the shiitake mushroom. So you want to make sure that you're frying both sides good. And let's put in the eggplant. So this doesn't need to be cooked that long either, so just about a minute or so is fine. You also want to make sure that you're taking out these crumbs. Otherwise when they start burning, then it'll burn the oil. Let's fry the seafood. If you put the seafood directly in the batter, then the batter will separate from the meat. So what you want to do is have a little flour, and then you want to coat the seafood with the flour first. Just kind of like when you're frying cutlets. So prevent the batter to separate, and also the leg part. So let's fry the seafood. So it's looking good. And lastly, the shrimp. The head part of the shrimp, I'm not going to put in the batter, I'm just going to fry it like this, only with the flour. So this is finished. It only takes like 30 seconds or a minute. Our main dish, the shrimp, or the prawn. So you want to dip only the meat part, and leave the tail without the batter. Like this. Away from you. So this is looking good. So let's turn off the heat, and let's put this on a plate. This is finished. It's looking so good. Let's eat. Okay, let's eat. Itadakimasu! Oh, this looks so delicious. So then, I have to start with the prawn. I personally like to eat it with the salt, like this. Itadakimasu! Mmm. Oh, this is good. Mmm. Oh, I love shrimp and prawns. Oh, they're so good. And dip it in the sauce. Mmm. Oh, this is also good. Oh, with this, you gotta have rice. Mmm. This is so good. There's also a dish called tendon, which you have over the rice, different kinds of tempura, and then dipped in these kind of sauce. And let's have the fish, with salt. Mmm. Mm-hmm. Good. Very delicious. Mmm. So let's have the head part of the prawn. Some people might not like this, but this is very good. Very crunchy. Very good. Itadakimasu. Mmm. This crunchiness. So I said that there are two ways to eat tempura, one with the sauce, one with the salt, but there are also another way, which is with salt and lemon. That's also good. Squeeze a little bit of lemon to it, and then with a little bit of salt, this is also really delicious. Mmm. Oh, I love this crunchiness. Mmm. Perfect. Let's have some broccoli, one with salt. Mmm. That's also very delicious. So I said these are typical ingredients, so broccoli is not a really typical tempura ingredient. I think it tastes good and it matches tempura. And here I have the sweet potato. Mmm. I like sweet potato more with the sauce. But of course, it's like a preference thing. Mmm. Shiitake mushroom, I like it with the salt. Mmm. Also good. Shiitake mushroom with the sauce, it's also good. Mmm. And the eggplant. Mmm. Eggplant, I like with the sauce. My other favorite is the pumpkin. Mmm. I love the sweetness of the pumpkin. So good. And pumpkin is also good with the sauce. Mmm. So delicious. So let's have this a tendon style. So I'm gonna dip it in the sauce, put the sauce all over, and then eat it with rice. Oh, this is a great combination. Mmm. So what I usually do when I make tempura is that I make extra serving. And then I eat it on the next day. I usually eat it with rice, put it on top of rice with the sauce, then you have your tendon, which is also delicious. Or you can also put this in bento, and then you have a great lunch. This is so delicious. Gochisosamadeshita. Oh, that was yet another delicious meal. As you saw, making tempura is a little bit of work, but you don't have to have all these ingredients that I had today. You can just have a couple of those. If you don't have access to seafood, then you can just also make it with meat. Chicken or beef or pork tempura is also delicious. Or if you're vegetarian, then you can just make strictly vegetable. Then you have vegetarian tempura. I hope this video was informative for you. I hope it gave you some motivation to make some Japanese food. If you like what you saw, please hit that like button. If you have any feedback or requests, write anything in the comments below. Otherwise, I look forward to see you in the next video. Bye.