🍤 Tempura
Tempura is a Japanese dish of shrimp and seasonal vegetables dipped in a very cold, thin batter of flour, egg and iced water and deep-fried until light, lacy and crisp. Good tempura is pale gold and barely greasy, with the shrimp juicy and the vegetables just tender inside. It is eaten immediately, with salt or grated radish on the side.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 12 large shrimp, peeled, tails on
- 400 g mixed vegetables (sweet potato, zucchini, mushrooms, bell pepper), sliced
- 120 g flour
- 1 egg
- 200 ml iced water
- Oil for deep-frying
- Salt and grated daikon to serve
Method
- Pat the shrimp and vegetables dry; make small cuts on the underside of the shrimp so they stay straight.
- Heat the oil to 175–180 °C.
- Lightly mix the egg and iced water, then stir in the flour with chopsticks — leave it lumpy.
- Dip pieces in the batter and fry in small batches for 2–3 minutes until crisp.
- Drain on a rack and serve at once with salt and grated daikon.
How to make it lighter
- Choose more vegetables and fewer pieces overall — every piece absorbs oil.
- Keep the oil hot so the batter absorbs less fat, and drain well on a rack.
- Make tempura one part of the meal with plain rice and salad, not the whole plate.
History
Deep-frying in batter is usually credited to Portuguese missionaries and traders who arrived in Japan in the 16th century, and the word tempura is often traced to Portuguese or Latin. By the Edo period tempura had become a popular street food in Tokyo, later developing into a refined restaurant cuisine.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →