← Nouns Cooking · Japanese

Ingredients

• 1 small sweet potato, unpeeled, sliced 5 mm thick
• 200 g kabocha squash, seeded, sliced 5 mm thick
• 1 Aubergine (eggplant), cut into fans or thick slices
• 4 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems removed
• 8 Green beans
• 1 l neutral oil, for deep-frying
• 120 g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1 egg, chilled
• 200 ml iced water
• 180 ml Water
• 5 g Kombu
• 3 tbsp Soy sauce
• 3 tbsp Mirin
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 5 cm piece Daikon radish, finely grated, to serve (optional)

Method

1. For the dipping sauce, warm the water and kombu over low heat for 10 min, taking the kombu out before it boils. Add the soy, mirin and sugar, bring to the boil and keep warm.
2. Pat all the vegetables completely dry; any moisture makes the oil spit and the batter slide off.
3. Heat the oil in a deep, heavy pan to 170–180°C (340–355°F).
4. Only now make the batter: beat the egg with the iced water, tip in the flour all at once and stir just a few strokes with chopsticks. It should stay lumpy, with dry flour still visible.
5. Dust each piece of vegetable lightly with flour, dip it in the batter and lower it into the oil. Fry in small batches: sweet potato and kabocha for 3–4 min, aubergine, shiitake and beans for 1–2 min, until crisp and pale gold.
6. Skim stray bits of batter from the oil between batches and drain the tempura on a rack.
7. Serve right away with the warm dipping sauce and grated daikon, or with a little flaky salt.

Tips

• Keep the batter ice-cold and barely mixed: cold, lumpy batter fries lighter and crisper than smooth.
• Contains wheat, egg and soy. Never leave hot oil unattended.

Sources

Written in our own words after cross-checking these recipes:

Just One Cookbook RecipeTin Japan Chopstick Chronicles