From Setsuko Yoshizuka,
Your Guide to Japanese Food.
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Do you like crispy tempura? Tempura is deep fried vegetable or seafood, which is commonly eaten in Japan. If you know some tips, it's not so hard to make delicious tempura at home. All ingredients can be found easily at your local grocery stores. Actually, you can make tempura with almost anything. For example, tempura banana and tempura ice cream are tasty!

Basic Steps for Cooking Tempura:

1. Prepare the ingredients.
2. Make tempura batter.
3. Heat vegetable oil in a deep pan to 340-350F degree.
4. Lightly dip ingredients in the batter and immediately fry them until crisp. It takes longer to fry vegetables than to fry seafood.
5. Drain tempura on a rack.
6. Serve right away with tentsuyu (tempura dipping sauce) or salt. Tempura is best served hot. *Grated daikon radish is a common condiment.

How to Make Tempura Shrimp
Tips for Making Crispy Tempura

Common Ingredients for Tempura:
Shrimp / Squid / Green pepper / Eggplant / Sweet potato / Potato / Kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) / Carrot / Shiitake Mushrooms / Renkon (lotus roots)

Tempura Variations:

Kakiage (mixed tempura): To make kakiage, mix left over tempura batter and thin strips or small pieces of several ingredients together. Take a scoop of the ingredients in a large spoon and slip them to 340F degree oil. Make kakiage into your favorite size.
Scallop Kakiage Recipe

Tempura Rice Bowl - Tendon: Serve steamed Japanese rice in a bowl. Dip tempura lightly in tentsuyu - tempura dipping sauce. Place the tempura on top of steamed rice.

Tempura Udon / Tempura Soba: Boil udon noodles / soba noodles (the boiling time varies depending on the types of noodles) and drain. Heat men-tsuyu (noodle dipping soup) in a pan and add the udon / soba noodles. Serve the udon / soba noodle soup in a bowl. Place tempura on top of the noodle soup.

Tempura Momiji (Japanese Maples)