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.
Table of Contents
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
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Vegetable Tempura
Ingredients
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)
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
Editor’s Note: The post was originally published on Jan 20, 2013.
Hi! I bought a fresh renkon. What’s the best way to pre cook or prepare it before I tempura fry it? Thanks!
Hi Jennie! If you can slice thin (5-7 mm), you can just go straight fry without precooking it. 🙂
Dear Nami, Your Oshechi Ryori posts were wonderful. I am vegetarian, and made a New Year’s dinner for my husband and friends – all JOC recipes. It was a HUGE success. Everything was delicious and I especially appreciate the notes in recipes for vegetarian/vegan options. The menu included Gomae, Warm Mushroom Salad, Simmered Bamboo Shoots, Inarisushi, Teriyaki Tofu, and Vegetable Tempura. All of the ingredients were purchased at Mitsuwa in Arlington Heights, IL.
Thank you for all of your (and your team’s) hard work, beautiful photography, clear instructions, and excellent information. Unfortunately, we didn’t photograph the meal. I don’t think about these things until it is too late.
Hi Darcy! Thank you for your kind words! You have no idea how much your kind words mean to me! I often worried about our vegan/vegetarian readers if they have enough recipes from my site to make dishes or they know how to make my recipes into vegan/vegetarian-friendly. So thank you for sharing your enthusiasm and positivity! Happy New Year!
Domo arigato Nami-san! For sharing this recipe and great instruction on the techniques. I made tempura for the first time and it turned out pretty good for a first try.
I appreciate so much your hard work on what you are sharing on your blog; it is helping me learn to cook the foods of my childhood and more so I may share them with my children and husband! This is a blessing I cannot properly put into words!
I hope you and your family have a very happy New Year 💗
Hi Midori-san! You have no idea how much your kind words mean to me! Thank you for trying my recipe. I’m happy to hear your family enjoyed the dish. 🙂 Happy New Year to you and your family!
Great recipe thanks🤗. Had this dish at restaurant for first time, want to try at home!
Hi Rhoda! Hope you enjoy the recipe! 🙂
[…] serving with anything from grilled chicken to meatloaf. It’s actually reminiscent of tempura vegetables, but less refined and more […]
Hi, Nami! This vegetable tempura looks absolutely delicious. I’ll have to try some. Also, have you ever heard of ice cream tempura? It’s really good and I want to try to make it at home. Do you know the recipe for it?
Hi Ashlynn! I think I might have tried once somewhere… it’s not something we eat in Japan, but I know it’s a popular dessert at Japanese restaurants here. Maybe I’ll give it a try one day! 🙂
Thanks Nami! I researched a little about ice cream tempura, and I found out that it’s not completely Japanese, but you like mixes of Japanese food with a twist, so I think you’ll enjoy it!😊
Hi Ashlynn! Yeah I’ve seen it on the menu at Japanese restaurants in the US, but not in Japan. I think I’ve even tried it once… maybe one day I’ll try at home!
[…] Vegetable Tempura […]
I made this and it brought back memories–so much lighter than the tempura you often find in restaurants in the US! My husband felt like he’d never had real tempura before because the stuff he’d always eaten was so bready.
One concern though. I had fresh lotus root and used it as indicated (peeled, washed, then soaked in water/vinegar). My husband came through the kitchen and ate one slice raw while I was cooking. He later read you shouldn’t eat fresh lotus root raw because as an aquatic plant, it may contain parasites. So now we’re wondering how rare “may contain” is—is it just a small chance or did he likely acquire Fasciolopsis buski parasite doing this. We bought the lotus root at an HMart in the US. I’m hoping it’s a rare thing and people don’t worry about it, but I can’t tell from reading online.
Hi Natasha! I’m so glad to hear you and your husband enjoyed this recipe. Thank you for your kind feedback. 🙂
As for the lotus root, I looked it up in Japanese, and many sites said you “can” eat fresh (seasonal) raw lotus root but it tastes better when cooked. Some people may have a stomachache (probably eat too much) but if your husband just had a few bites, I don’t think he should be worried about it. 🙂
[…] Vegetable Tempura […]
Hi, I don’t have a thermometer to put in the oil, is there any other way I can tell if the root vegetables would cook thoroughly> last time the sweet potato took a very long time to bake so I ended up cooking it in a pot with boiling water.
Hi Judy! Tempura can be one of the difficult dish among deep frying dish, mainly because each ingredient has different deep fry temperature and cooking time. But the common sense apply so once you feel comfortable deep frying, it should not be too difficult.
Root vegetables take time to cook, so it’s best at the lower temperature (but it’s not low temp) and slowly cook through. If it’s too low, then the batter will absorb all the oil. When you put the root vegetables in the oil, bubbles should come out. If it looks calm, then it’s too low. And make sure not to overcrowd because that means that you put too many ingredients and oil temperature went down fast. Just start with 2-3 pieces.
When the oil gets hot, it burns faster before the inside is cooked through. If you are not sure, take it out and insert a bamboo skewer to see if it goes through smoothly. Tempura requires some practice and I’m not an expert at it as I don’t deep fry often anymore. So don’t be too hard on yourself if it doesn’t come out. It’s one of the hardest (even though it’s simple!) skills in Japanese cooking. 🙂
Hi Nami,
I tried your tempura recipe last night and followed it to a tee but the batter was quite thick right off the start and the veggies came out soggy and doughy. Any ideas where I went wrong? Thanks!
Hi Weston! First of all, thank you so much for trying this recipe. It’s a bit hard to trouble shoot without looking at the batter or how you deep fry…
Thick batter – if it’s thicker than mine, then my first thought was that your 1 cup has probably more than 120 g. If you scoop up with a measuring cup, it can be as much as 150 g. So if you’re not using a scale, make sure to fluff up the flour first, and then scoop up flour with a spoon, and then transfer to a 1 cup measuring cup, That way, the weight is as close as 120 g.
Next is the deep fry oil temperature. When you said “soggy” my first thought was that your oil was too low. If it’s higher temperature, it shouldn’t be “soggy”. It looks like it absorbed so much oil at low temperature.
Hope this helps a little bit….
Hello Nami ????
My name is Paula from Australia, I clicked on your website for your vegetable tempura and couldn’t stop watching you making your recipes they all look so delicious. So I wanted to sign up but it’s coming up mailing list not active ???? I will try again another time.
Thank you for all your beautiful recipes I am going to start with your veg tempura tonight ????????????
Hi Paula! Thank you so much for your kind comment here. I just added your email to subscriber list. Hope you enjoy(ed) the tempura recipe! xo
Hi, can I know if there’s a way to make tempura without using egg? I mean a totally vegetarian tempura recipe?
Thank you
Hi Jayani! Some people make tempura without an egg – just flour and water as main ingredients. You can adjust the water. Some people add a tiny bit of rice vinegar too. 🙂
I have been making the batter with seltzer water. Do you recommend I change? I also include shrimp and chicken in my tempura.
Hi Peter! Some Japanese use this western technique to make tempura batter too these days, but traditionally we did not and still do not use carbonated water to make tempura. 🙂 You can definitely use it!
Looks so delicious. I think I need to get ambitious and try this. Thank you for linking to your Shrimp Tempura and how to prepare shrimp (straight).
Hi June! Thank you! I’m glad you found the tutorial on straightening shrimp. 🙂