EASIEST Tempura Rice Bowl Recipe at Home! | Japanese Tendon

Hi guys! Welcome back to Champ's Japanese Kitchen. Today, we're making tempura. No, we're making tendon. Crispy tempura over rice. So, let's get cooking! Oh, tempura. One of Japan's most popular comfort foods. Beautifully juicy pieces of prawn with sweet and tender vegetables. All wrapped in a light but crisp batter. It really reminds me of my childhood. Eating my mom's freshly fried tempura around the kitchen table. And the humble rice. Plucked from the rice fields in the mountains of Japan. So simple. So versatile. So delicious. Naturally sweet, fluffy, and chewy. Finally, a sweet and sticky soy sauce tane coats each piece of tempura so beautifully. Combined together, you have one of my favorite dishes. Tendon. Sorry about that. I guess I got a little carried away. First for our seafood, we'll be using black tiger prawns. And cod. You can use any seafood you like. Such as red snapper or even catfish. For our vegetables, we'll be using onion, eggplant, carrot, perilla leaves or shiso leaves in Japanese, and finally some shiitake mushrooms. Let's start with the prawns. Using your hands, take off the heads. And then peel off the shell. Leaving the tail on like so. Next, we'll cut the end of the tail as it contains a lot of water and is dangerous when frying. Then make a small cut along the back of the shrimp. And remove the vein and clean inside. We'll prepare the prawns in two different ways. First, make some small slices along the belly of the shrimp. Then turn it over and press down gently flatten it out like this. For the second one, we'll leave as it is. You can pick your favorite one or do both. For the cod, take off any bones from the belly. And any bones inside the flesh. Also, make sure there are no scales left on the skin. Cut the cod in half and set aside. Next, let's prepare the vegetables. Cut the stem of the shiitake off. And if you have a sharp knife like mine, make a pretty star shape. Remember, you eat with your eyes as well. For the eggplant, cut off the top. Then in half. Leaving one centimeter from the top. Make slices down the eggplant. Push the slices apart. And you should have a fan shape like this. Then, cut off the stalks of the shiso and set them aside. Next, we'll prepare our carrots and onions for the kakiage, a vegetable mixed tempura. Cut off the top of the carrot. Then cut in half. Then, using a peeler or your knife, peel off the skin. We want to cut it into small slices. I used my knife so I cut it like this. But if you use a peeler, slice the carrot thinly into rectangles. Then bunch them together and cut into small slices. For the onion, cut the top of the onion. Then cut in half. Cut diagonally and remove the root. Then peel off the skin. Similar to the carrot, cut into thin slices. Next, we'll make tare or the sauce for our tendon. I made the tare sauce for two to three portions this time. But feel free to change the amount as needed. Into a saucepan, put in 200 milliliters of water. 90 milliliters of soy sauce. And the same amount of mirin. Then bring up to a boil. When it starts to boil, add 20 grams of sugar. And give it a good taste. Remember, a good chef continuously checks the taste while cooking. The tare will burn easily. So turn to low heat and simmer for five minutes. Let's check the taste again. Oishi! For the tempura batter, place into a bowl 160 milliliters of cold water. And one egg. Then give it a good whisk. Add in small parts at a time. 90 grams of wheat flour passed through a sieve. Mix gently. Otherwise, the gluten will develop and the batter won't get crunchy. Don't worry if there are small bits inside. So it should look something like this. Before frying our tempura, we will drip all of our ingredients in flour. Then brush off any excess like this. For the shiitake and shiso leaves, we will just drip one side in the flour. In a large pan, add in a neutral flavored oil until about one third full. Today I'm using rice oil. To add a delicious aroma, I added some sesame oil at the end. Bring the oil to around 160 to 170 degrees Celsius. To check if it is the right temperature, put some of the tempura batter into the oil. If it rises up and is fried immediately, it's ready. Or feel free to use a distal thermometer. Let's start with the prawn. Holding the tail, dip both sides into the batter. Then put it into the oil, laying it away from you. Add a bit more of the batter like this to make it even more crispy. Next, add in the cod, then the eggplant. Then, dip the floured side of the shiitake into the batter and fry. The vegetables cook quickly, so take them out in one or two minutes. The cod may take another minute or so, depending on its thickness. There will be some tempura scraps left, called tenkasu, which we'll use later. For the kakiage, into a bowl, add 40 grams of onion, 30 grams of carrot, and 10 grams of sliced shiso leaves. Add in around 2 to 3 grams of flour and mix. Finally, add in 80 grams of the tempura batter and give it a good mix. Check the temperature of your oil. Then, if you have this fancy mold, add in a quarter of the vegetable mix and fry for around 2 minutes. The mold will help keep everything together. If you don't have this lovely gadget, using two spoons, slowly put the vegetables into the side and fry. If it starts to separate, just place it back on the top like this. Oh yeah, let's fry the other prawn that we didn't cut and see how it turns out. We'll also dip the floured side of the shiso in the batter and fry. This will fry very quickly, so be careful. Now, let's build our tendon. Fill your bowl with rice and layer on some tenkasu for added crunch. Then, a drizzle of our sauce. For each tempura, dip one side into the tare, then lay onto our rice. First, our kakiage, then our prawns. Next, our cod. An eggplant. Finally, our shiso. And some more of our tare. Remember, we eat with our eyes as well, so make it look pretty. Nice! And there you go, guys. One of my favorite dishes, tendon. A mixture of juicy pieces of seafood, sweet vegetables, crisp tempura, sticky sauce, and fluffy rice. It's so simple yet so delicious. If you guys have any other healthy recipes you want me to make, please comment down below.