Not to be confused with Tempera. Japanese dish tempura vegetables consisting of seafood, meat and vegetables that have been battered and deep fried. Specially formulated tempura flour is available in supermarkets.
No seasonings or salt is added to the batter, or to the ingredients, except for some recipes recommending to rinse seafoods in salt water before preparation. Thin slices or strips of vegetables or seafood are dipped in the batter, then briefly deep-fried in hot oil. The finished fry is pale whiteish, thin and fluffy, yet crunchy. Tenkasu are often reserved as ingredients in other dishes or as a topping. Various seafood and vegetables are commonly used as the ingredients in traditional tempura. Vegetables tempura is called yasai tempura.
The all vegetable tempura might be served as a vegetarian dish. Tentsuyu is the most common sauce consumed with tempura. Cooked pieces of tempura are either eaten with dipping sauce, salted without sauce, or used to assemble other dishes. Tempura is commonly served with grated daikon and eaten hot immediately after frying. In Japan, it is often found in bowls of soba or udon soup often in the form of a shrimp, shiso leaf, or fritter.
Tempura is also used in combination with other foods. Black bass ten-don in Lake Ashi, Japan. Earlier Japanese deep-fried food was either simply fried without breading or batter, or fried with rice flour. However, toward the end of the 16th century, the technique of fritter-cooking with a batter of flour and eggs was acquired in Nagasaki from Portuguese missionaries. Making the best use of fresh seafood while preserving its delicate taste, tempura used only flour, eggs and water as ingredients and the batter was not flavored. The main reason tempura became popular was the abundance of seafood.
In addition, as oil extraction techniques advanced, cooking oil became cheaper. Serving of deep-fried food indoors was prohibited during Edo because tempura oil was a fire hazard in Japanese building, which were made of paper and wood. The modern tempura recipe was first published in 1671 in the cook book called “料理献立抄”. After the Meiji period, tempura was no longer considered a fast food item but instead developed as a high-class cuisine. Look up tempura in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
