Tempura

Tempura is a Japanese dish where seafood and vegetables are dipped in a thin batter and deep-fried. Its roots go back to the 16th century, when Portuguese Jesuit missionaries introduced the technique of coating food in flour and frying it, a method that arrived in Japan through Nanban trade.

The batter is made from iced water, eggs, and soft wheat flour, such as cake or all-purpose flour. To keep it light, some cooks add baking soda, baking powder, or use sparkling water. The batter is mixed briefly with chopsticks, leaving lumps, and kept cold with ice. Overmixing activates gluten, making the fried coating soft and doughy. Pre-made tempura flour, a low-gluten mix sometimes with leaveners, is also sold. No salt or seasonings go into the batter or ingredients, though seafood may be rinsed in salted water first. Tempura is not coated in breadcrumbs—dishes like tonkatsu that use breadcrumbs are called furai.

For frying, thin slices of vegetables or seafood are dipped in batter and quickly deep-fried in oil. Vegetable or canola oil is common, but traditional sesame oil or tea seed oil is still used in specialty shops, as certain compounds in these oils help create a lighter, crispier result. The finished tempura is pale, thin, fluffy, and crunchy. Bits of leftover batter, called tenkasu, are scooped out between batches with a small mesh scoop to prevent burning and off-flavors; these bits are often saved for other dishes or toppings.

Common seafood includes prawn, shrimp, squid, scallop, crab, sweetfish, conger eel, and various white fish like cod, haddock, pollock, plaice, skate, ray, dogfish (also called rock salmon), whiting, Japanese whiting, sea bass, and sea perch. Vegetable tempura, called yasai tempura, can be served as a vegetarian dish and includes bamboo shoots, bell pepper, broccoli, butternut squash, carrot, maize, eggplant, burdock, ginger, green beans, kabocha squash, mugwort, mushrooms (such as maitake and shiitake), okra, onion, pumpkin, potato, lotus root, seaweed, shishito pepper, shiso leaf, sweet potato, yam, and egg.

Tempura is eaten hot, right after frying, often with grated daikon. It can be dipped in sauce, salted, or used in other dishes. The most common sauce is tentsuyu, made from roughly three parts dashi, one part mirin, and one part soy sauce. Alternatively, it may be sprinkled with sea salt, or a mix of powdered green tea and salt, or yuzu and salt. Kakiage is a type of tempura made from mixed vegetable strips—like onion, carrot, and burdock—sometimes with shrimp or squid, fried as small round fritters. Tempura also appears over soba noodles (tempura soba or tensoba), over rice in a bowl (tendon), or on top of udon soup (tempura udon).

The word "tempura" comes from the Latin *tempora*, referring to Catholic fasting times like Lent, when Portuguese missionaries ate a dish called *peixinhos da horta*—vegetables coated in a thick batter of flour, sugar, and sake, fried in lard, and eaten without sauce. In the early 17th century, as food cart culture grew around Tokyo Bay, tempura changed: cooks used only flour, eggs, and water for a lighter batter, mixed minimally in cold water to avoid gluten activation, and focused on fresh seafood to preserve its delicate taste.