Shrimp tempura is a delicious Japanese dish that often acts as an appetizer, but a great shrimp tempura recipe can also make for a crispy, full meal of fried shrimp, too. This is a common dish ordered in Japanese restaurants, but can you make shrimp tempura at home too? We'll walk you through how to prepare this Japanese recipe.
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Making Shrimp Tempura
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For shrimp tempura made at home instead of in a Japanese restaurant, most recipes call for jumbo or large shrimp, all-purpose flour, Panko breadcrumbs, large eggs, a cooking oil like vegetable oil or canola oil for the hot oil needed for the deep fryer, and occasionally potato starch or cornstarch. That's all to make the tempura batter. You can also make your recipe gluten-free, depending on the batter ingredients you choose. If you're concerned about carbohydrates, many keto-friendly recipes can be found as well, though the best tempura doesn't worry about the nutrition information.
For the tempura dipping sauce, you'll need dashi or dashi stock granules, water, soy sauce, mirin, sugar, grated daikon radish, and some recipes suggest adding chopped scallion.
You combine the sauce ingredients in a pan, bring cold water to a boil, then allow it to simmer.
For the shrimp, you'll heat your oil in a pot or wok for deep frying or in a deep-fry appliance. You can test the oil temperature by inserting chopsticks and waiting to see if bubbles form. If they do, the oil is ready. Try to choose an oil with a smoke point of at least 375 degrees F for easy deep frying.
Mix the egg batter and the flour, then coat the shrimp in the batter. The shrimp can then be covered in breadcrumbs before being deep-fried until golden brown. When they're done, place the shrimp on a wire rack or plate lined with paper towels to absorb extra oil.
This whole process shouldn't take long at all. Most total time estimates for recipes suggest half an hour to 45 minutes from prep time to serving.
Any excess batter can be used to make vegetable tempura or other tempura recipes. The possibilities are endless!
You could throw in sweet potatoes, broccoli, or other veggies you have sitting in your fridge to make a whole Asian-inspired dinner with the ingredients you already had for the shrimp tempura. Enjoy with a glass of ice cold tea or ice water!
