Vegetable Tempura 野菜の天ぷら

Who can resist delicious crispy homemade vegetable tempura? When making tempura at home, the goal is a crispy yet airy coating that doesn’t absorb oil when deep-fried. I’ll teach you how to achieve excellent results in this recipe.

Alongside sushi and ramen, tempura is another mandatory menu item for Japanese restaurants. Encased in a crunchy, crispy yet light batter, these perfectly deep-fried seafood, and vegetable are seriously addicting.

After sharing my Shrimp Tempura recipe, I am excited to share today’s recipe on Vegetable Tempura (野菜の天ぷら) since many of you have requested it. Dipped in batter and deep-fried, each vegetable gets cooked perfectly on the inside, while the natural sweetness and flavor are enhanced. You would enjoy them piping hot with a delicate dipping sauce with grated daikon.

Some of the common vegetables used for Tempura include Japanese sweet potatoes, mushrooms (shiitake or king oysters are delicious), Kabocha squash, bell peppers, lotus roots, and eggplant. When I make vegetable tempura at home, I also like to include shiso leaves as well.

The Key for Perfect Vegetable Tempura

Before I start talking about how to make Tempura, please understand that even for the Japanese, making perfect Tempura is not easy. It requires a lot of skills and practice so don’t be discouraged if your first tempura does not look like ones from restaurants. But how do you get that crispy texture without the food being too oily?

The key to perfect tempura is the batter and the temperature of the oil. I created a few steps below to go over the tips for making tempura.

Vegetable Tempura Cooking Tips

How to Make Tempura Batter

Most of Tempura chefs recommend that flour to water ratio should be 1:1. Some recipe requires an egg (or two depending on the amount of flour and water), and some don’t. It’s up to you. When the batter is too thin, the ingredients won’t have much of batter around it and there is no fluffy and crisp texture to it. When the batter is too thick, you feel like you are eating the chewy exterior.

Please remember a few tips about the batter. Always mix the batter using chopsticks for only a few seconds to at most 1 minute, leaving lumps in the mixture on purpose. Overmixing the batter will result in the activation of wheat gluten, which causes the flour mixture to become chewy and dough-like when fried.

The cold batter is absolutely necessary for the unique fluffy and crisp tempura. All the ingredients (water, egg, and flour) must be cold prior to making the batter, and it has to be made RIGHT BEFORE you deep fry and has to be kept cold at all times to avoid activation of wheat gluten.

What Oil To Use for Tempura

The Tempura specialty restaurant uses untoasted sesame oil (clear) or a special blend of oil that is a combination of many kinds of oil. Each restaurant has its own secret recipe and blends that they perfected over the years. At home, you can simply enhance the flavor by adding sesame oil into the vegetable oil.

The temperature has to be between 320-356°F (160°C – 180°C) depending on how long it takes to cook through the ingredients. If it takes a long time to cook, then deep fry at a lower temperature because high temperature will cook the batter too fast and inside won’t be cooked thoroughly. And remember, cold battered ingredients will lower the oil temperature quickly; therefore, if you need to deep fry vegetables at 338°F (170°C), you need to bring the oil to 356-365°F (180-185°C) first.

How to Deep Fry Tempura

If you ask me what’s the most difficult part of making Tempura, I’d say it’s to keep the right temperature at all times while deep frying. It cannot be too high or too low. Most of the time I do not require a thermometer,  but if you are not used to deep frying, I highly recommend you get a thermometer to precisely know at what temperature you are deep frying. The right sound of tempura being deep-fried is like a light sound. Like cider just being opened. That kind of light bubbly sound.

In order to maintain the correct temperature, do not overcrowd with ingredients when deep frying. As guidance remember just half of the oil surface should be covered with ingredients. When you put too many ingredients in at once, the oil temperature will drop too quickly.

What if the oil gets too hot? The quick solution to this is to add a bit of extra oil or add more cold-battered ingredients. As I said, it is all about temperature control when deep frying.

Lastly, please pick up crumbs in the oil between batches. The burnt crumb will attach to your new tempura if you don’t pick them up, and oil will get darker once the crumbs become burnt and it leaves a bad flavor in the oil.

Other Tempura Recipes

• Shrimp Tempura
• Gluten Free Tempura

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Vegetable Tempura

4.68 from 92 votes

Who can resist delicious and crispy homemade vegetable tempura? When making tempura at home, the goal is a crispy yet airy coating that doesn‘t absorb oil when deep-fried. I’ll teach you how to achieve excellent results in this recipe.

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Prep Time: 25 minutes mins

Cook Time: 45 minutes mins

Total Time: 1 hour hr 10 minutes mins

Servings: 2

Ingredients

 

US CustomaryMetric

 

1x2x3x

For the Dipping Sauce (Tentsuyu)

• ▢ ¾ cup dashi (Japanese soup stock) (use standard Awase Dashi, dashi packet or powder, or Vegan Dashi)
• ▢ 3 Tbsp soy sauce
• ▢ 2 Tbsp mirin
• ▢ 2 tsp sugar

For the Tempura

• ▢ 1 Japanese sweet potato (Satsumaimo) (unpeeled)
• ▢ ⅛ kabocha squash (unpeeled and seeded)
• ▢ 2 inch lotus root (renkon) (peeled and precooked; I used boiled lotus root (renkon no mizuni) from a Japanese grocery store)
• ▢ 2 king oyster mushrooms (eringi)
• ▢ 1 Japanese or Chinese eggplant
• ▢ 4 shiso leaves (perilla/ooba)

For Deep-Frying

• ▢ neutral oil (enough for 1½ inches or 3 cm of oil in the pot; or use a 10-to-1 ratio of neutral oil to sesame oil)
• ▢ flour (for dusting the shiso leaves)

For the Batter

• ▢ 1 cup all-purpose flour (plain flour) (chilled; weigh your flour or use the “fluff and sprinkle“ method and level it off)
• ▢ 200 ml iced water (¾ cup + 4 tsp)
• ▢ 1 large egg (50 g each w/o shell) (chilled)

For Serving

• ▢ 2 inches daikon radish (grated)

Japanese Ingredient Substitution: If you want substitutes for Japanese condiments and ingredients, click here.

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Instructions

 

Before You Start…

• I encourage you to weigh your flour in metric using a kitchen scale. Click on the “Metric“ button at the top of the recipe to convert the ingredient measurements to metric. If you‘re using a cup measurement, please follow the “fluff and sprinkle“ method: Fluff your flour with a spoon, sprinkle the flour into your measuring cup, and level it off. Otherwise, you may scoop more flour than you need. 

To Make the Dipping Sauce (Tentsuyu)

• Gather all the ingredients.
  
• Combine ¾ cup dashi (Japanese soup stock), 3 Tbsp soy sauce, 2 Tbsp mirin, and 2 tsp sugar in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil. Then, lower the heat and let it simmer until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and set aside.
  

To Prepare the Ingredients

• Gather all the ingredients.
  
• Slice 1 Japanese sweet potato (Satsumaimo) into ¼-inch (6 mm) rounds and soak in water for 15–30 minutes to remove the excess starch. Then, pat dry them with paper towels.
  
• Cut ⅛ kabocha squash and 2 inch lotus root (renkon) into ¼-inch (6 mm) slices. Soak the lotus root in vinegar water (2 cups water + 1 tsp vinegar) for 5 minutes and pat dry them with paper towels.
  
• Cut 2 king oyster mushrooms (eringi) into thin slices.
  
• For 1 Japanese or Chinese eggplant, set it aside for now and prepare it right before you deep-fry. Cut off and discard the stem and calyx, then cut in half lengthwise. Place the halves flat side down on the cutting board and cut lengthwise into very thin slices (⅛ inch or 3 mm), leaving 1 inch (2.5 cm) of the bottom tip intact so the slices stay connected. Then, gently press down to fan out the slices. Keep 4 shiso leaves (perilla/ooba) whole.

  To get crispy tempura, make sure your ingredients are dry; pat them dry with a paper towel, if needed. Any excess moisture will make the tempura soggy.
  

To Prepare the Oil

• Once the ingredients are ready, add neutral oil to a deep fryer or pot to a depth of 1½ inches (3 cm) and heat to 320°F (160°C). Use a thermometer for precise temperature control. To check with wooden chopsticks, dip them in the oil; when small bubbles form around the tips, the oil is ready. Tip: For enhanced aroma and taste, I like to add 1 part sesame oil for every 10 parts neutral oil.
  

To Make the Batter

• While the oil is heating up, prepare the tempura batter. We‘ll use a 1-to-1 ratio (by volume) of flour to egg + water. Gather all the ingredients.
  
• Sift 1 cup all-purpose flour (plain flour) into a large bowl.
  
• Add 200 ml iced water to a measuring cup or bowl. Then, add 1 large egg (50 g each w/o shell).
  
• Whisk the egg and water mixture vigorously and discard the foam on the surface.
  
• Slowly pour the egg mixture into the flour while mixing the batter with chopsticks in a figure 8 pattern for about 15–20 seconds. Do not overmix to avoid activating the wheat gluten; it‘s fine to leave some lumps in the batter. Keep the batter cold at all times by adding 1–2 ice cubes to the batter or by putting the batter bowl in a larger bowl of iced water.
  

To Deep-Fry

• Deep-fry starting with the root vegetables, which need a lower oil temperature than the non-root vegetables. For the root vegetables, deep-fry at 320°F (160°C) for 3–4 minutes. For the other vegetables and mushrooms, deep-fry at 338–356°F (170–180°C) for 1–2 minutes. Deep-fry the shiso leaves for 15–20 seconds.

  When the oil reaches the right temperature, dip one piece of vegetable in the batter, let the excess drip off for a second or two, and very gently place it into the hot oil.
  
• Continue dipping and adding one piece at a time. Do not add too many ingredients at once, and make sure to maintain the right temperature at all times. Tip: When you deep-fry, do not crowd the pot because the oil temperature will drop quickly. Your ingredients should take up no more than about half of the oil surface area at any one time. For more helpful hints, read my post on how to deep-fry food.

  To batter the shiso leaves, sprinkle a bit of sifted flour on the back of the leaves and dip only the back of the leaf into the batter. Tip: Dusting the shiso with extra flour before dipping helps the batter adhere better. We do this with Shrimp Tempura and Kakiage, too. The flour acts as a glue and the batter tends to stay on the ingredients better.
  
• Deep-fry until golden and remove from the oil. Transfer the tempura to a wire rack or paper towel to remove the excess oil.
  
• Continue to deep-fry until you‘ve cooked all your ingredients. Between batches, use a fine-mesh skimmer to remove the tempura crumbs, which will burn and turn the oil darker if you leave them in the oil.
  

To Serve

• Peel and grate 2 inches daikon radish and gently squeeze out some of the liquid. 
  
• Prepare 3–4 Tbsp of warm tentsuyu in each individual dipping bowl with 1 Tbsp grated daikon per serving on the side. Serve the tempura immediately. Mix some grated daikon into the dipping sauce for a refreshing taste and dip the tempura pieces in the dipping sauce to enjoy.
  

To Store

• If you have unused dipping sauce, you can store it in the refrigerator for up to 1–2 weeks.

  You can keep the leftovers in a single layer between paper towels and put in an airtight container or a resealable plastic bag. Store in the freezer for 2 weeks. To reheat, place the tempura on a wire rack in the preheated oven (400ºF or 200ºC) or the toaster oven for 5 minutes or until crisp on the outside and heated through on the inside.

Nutrition

Calories: 652 kcal · Carbohydrates: 82 g · Protein: 16 g · Fat: 30 g · Saturated Fat: 23 g · Polyunsaturated Fat: 1 g · Monounsaturated Fat: 4 g · Trans Fat: 1 g · Cholesterol: 65 mg · Sodium: 843 mg · Potassium: 1559 mg · Fiber: 12 g · Sugar: 16 g · Vitamin A: 16993 IU · Vitamin C: 14 mg · Calcium: 93 mg · Iron: 6 mg

Author: Namiko Hirasawa Chen

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Japanese

Keyword: deep fried, tempura

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Editor’s Note: The post was originally published on Jan 20, 2013.