Japanese · Free recipe
Light Vegetable Tempura
An ice-cold, barely mixed batter of flour, cornstarch, and sparkling water fries into a lacy, almost transparent crust around sweet potato, green beans, shiitake, and zucchini. A warm dashi-soy dipping sauce with grated daikon cuts through the crispness and keeps each piece tasting clean.
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Medium
Method
-
Warm the dashi, soy sauce, and mirin in a small pan until steaming, then set aside for dipping.
-
Pat all the vegetables completely dry and dust them lightly with flour, tapping off the excess.
-
Heat the oil to 340F in a deep pot; sweet potato fries best at this gentler temperature.
-
Whisk the egg yolk into the sparkling water, then add the flour and cornstarch all at once and stir with chopsticks for only a few seconds, leaving lumps and dry pockets.
-
Dip a few pieces at a time into the batter and fry the sweet potato for 3 minutes, turning once, until crisp and pale gold.
-
Raise the oil to 360F and fry the green beans, mushrooms, and zucchini for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, skimming stray batter bits between batches.
-
Drain on a rack and serve at once with the warm dipping sauce and a mound of grated daikon.
Zest note from the test kitchen
Set the batter bowl inside a larger bowl of ice; the colder it stays, the less gluten develops and the lighter the crust.
