New discoveries in fried food

[spinbaby]

Now that I’m more or less on my feet again after breaking my ankle, I’ve been busy in the kitchen. Today for lunch, I made panko breaded shrimp, which were absolutely delicious and I learned a couple of things along the way.

First, I’ve finally found the perfect setup for deep-frying at home: an induction cooktop, an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven, and a good vent fan. The cooktop keeps the perfect temperature, which is an absolute game changer—no more fussing with burners and thermometers.

My second discovery came from watching Japanese cooks on YouTube. When they breaded food for deep frying, instead of doing flour, egg, and crumb bound breading as we do in the West, they make a slurry of flour and water, then dip the food in that before rolling in crumbs. I tried this with the shrimp and it was a good sight easier and also resulted in a lighter breading—a win all around.

[hippywife]

1. The latter method is called tempura.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempura

[spinbaby]

4. Tempura is different

Tempura is food fried in a light batter. This is literally just flour and water—no egg, sake, or anything like that—and panko bread crumbs. It’s breaded, not battered.

[hippywife]

5. But it's not mandatory that you use...

egg and/or sake. I've made tempura shrimp before without it. I think it mostly refers to being lightly battered as opposed to breaded,

[Warpy]

2. I agree about the Asian breading

You can spice up the slurry any way you want to and the whole thing is less messy to do and lighter when you get the finished product. Regular seasoned bread crumbs also work, it doesn't have to be panko.

[Marthe48]

3. I've made my own batter for veggies for years

Last edited Mon Apr 3, 2023, 06:04 PM - Edit history (1)

Flour, water, egg, oil, salt and a little baking powder. I don't measure the ingredients, but probably 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of water, 1 egg, a TBS oil, a couple shakes of salt, and a dash of baking powder. Mix the ingredients together till it's about as thick as heavy cream, and dip the prepared veggies in. Fry in hot fat, turn as needed.

If you use a whole raw egg, you'll end up with a lot of batter. If you have leftovers, you can freeze it in a bag or other airtight container.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. I see cornstarch and water used in a lot of Chinese recipes. nt