Vegetable Tempura with Tentsuyu Dipping Sauce, Made with Monk Fruit Sweetener
International dishesFried DishesJapan1 hour 10 minutes
Anyone who loves Japanese fried food wants to know how vegetable tempura with tentsuyu is made. It is good for the thin, crisp shell over vegetables that stay sweet inside. Holding the batter and the oil at the right temperature is the difficult part, and getting it wrong gives a thick, soggy coating.
The batter is stirred in a figure eight for only 15 to 20 seconds, and a few small lumps left in it are exactly right. The bowl is kept cold with a few ice cubes. The oil holds at 160 degrees C and only then rises to 170 to 180 degrees for the next batch.
This batch weighs about 1.5kg, at roughly 120 calories per 100g.
Method
Make the tentsuyu: put 180ml dashi broth, 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 tablespoons mirin and 2 teaspoons kOBE Monk Fruit Blend in a small pot, bring it to a boil, then lower the heat to a bare simmer until everything has dissolved, and set it aside.
Cut 1 Japanese sweet potato into rounds about 6mm thick and soak them in water for 15 to 30 minutes to draw out the excess starch, then pat them completely dry.
Cut a quarter of a baby pumpkin and 5cm of lotus root into 6mm slices, soak the lotus root in a bowl of water with 1 teaspoon vinegar for 5 minutes, then pat it dry.
Slice 2 king oyster mushrooms thinly lengthwise. Leave the small eggplant until just before frying, then halve it lengthwise, score it at about 3mm intervals along its length while keeping about 2.5cm of the stem end intact, and press it gently into a fan. Rinse 4 shiso leaves and leave them whole.
Sift 120g all purpose flour into a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk 200ml ice water hard with 1 large chicken egg, then skim the foam off the surface.
Pour the egg and water mixture slowly into the flour and stir with chopsticks in a figure eight for about 15 to 20 seconds, stopping while a few small lumps remain. Keep the batter cold by adding 1 or 2 ice cubes or setting the bowl in a larger basin of iced water.
Pour about 1 liter of cooking oil into a deep pot so it stands about 3cm high, and heat it to 160 degrees C, testing by dipping the tip of a wooden chopstick and looking for fine bubbles around it.
Dip the sweet potato and lotus root in the batter and fry them for 3 to 4 minutes until pale gold. Raise the heat so the oil reaches about 170 to 180 degrees C, then dip the pumpkin, eggplant and mushroom and fry them for 1 to 2 minutes.
Dust a little dry flour over the underside of each shiso leaf, dip only that side in the tempura batter, and fry quickly for 15 to 20 seconds.
Lift the tempura onto a rack or paper towel and serve hot with the warm tentsuyu.
Tips
Fry in small batches so the oil temperature holds steady, which is the key to a crisp coating.
Japanese sweet potato can be swapped for Da Lat honey sweet potato, and baby pumpkin for thin slices of gourd pumpkin.
Japanese shiso can be swapped for Vietnamese perilla, and the smaller leaves fry faster.
Dashi powder (a broth from kombu and bonito flakes) is sold at large supermarkets, and a broth from kombu and mushroom keeps the dish vegetarian.
Mix the tempura batter with ice water and only a few rough strokes, since thorough mixing gives a chewy coating rather than a crisp one.
Need kOBE Monk Fruit Blend?
The recipe above is sweetened with kOBE Monk Fruit Blend, measured 1:1 like sugar. See the product page or send us a message.