Making Japanese Tempura Batter at home is super easy with this simple guide. Light, crispy, and super satisfying, you’ll have fresh and crunchy tempura in no time!
Whether you’re making shrimp tempura, vegetable tempura, or whatever you’re in the mood to deep fry, you’re not going to be able to have just one serving after experiencing the light, irresistible crunch of tempura.
A basic and authentic tempura batter only requires 3 simple ingredients that I’ll bet you have at home, eggs, all-purpose flour, and water. While you can definitely purchase pre-made batter mix, I find it much easier to make it from scratch whenever it’s needed.
Ingredients You’ll Need
- eggs — it’s important to keep your eggs cold
- flour — low-protein flours are ideal but I don’t want to spend the extra time and money going out to purchase cake flour specifically for tempura so I stick with all-purpose flour.
- water — ice cold, if possible
How to Make Tempura Batter
- To make the tempura batter, simply mix the eggs, flour, and water together. Do not over mix, it is ok if the batter is lumpy. Lumpy batter has more air in it which helps give your tempura a light, airy texture.
- To use, dip your vegetable or protein of choice in the batter to coat and fry in oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot that is at 340F/170C.
Recipe Tips
- Avoid letting the batter sit for too long, you want to make sure the ingredients for the batter and the batter stays cold.
- To keep the tempura batter colder longer, you can pre-chill the bowl that you’re mixing your batter in. You can also place your bowl of batter in a bowl of ice to keep it colder, longer.
- I like to use chopsticks to mix my batter but a whisk works fine.
- Using carbonated water will make your batter even lighter and airier if you have access to it.
- Skim the oil between batches so you don’t have burnt pieces that change the taste of the oil.
- Don’t overpack the flour. It’s best to fluff up the flour before spooning it into your measuring cup before leveling it off. This way you don’t end up with too much flour in your tempura batter.
What Ingredients to Use for Tempura
I usually stick to seafood, mushrooms, and (root) vegetables. My go-to are prawns (for Shrimp Tempura), crab meat, oyster mushrooms, sweet potatoes, yams, broccoli, eggplants, zucchinis, asparagus, cauliflower, lotus root, and nori! The world is your oyster here! I just highly recommend you slicing your vegetables, especially the root vegetables, thinly so it’s able to cook through in a couple of minutes. ⅛-¼ inch thick is ideal as everything will cook through before the batter burns.
Frequently Asked Questions
The cold ingredients helps the batter stay light and fluffy as the cold batter won’t absorb a ton of oil as it fries. It’s also important to use the batter ASAP as gluten will form if it sits around for too long.
It’s important that the oil is at 340F/170C. If the oil is not hot enough, then the batter absorbs too much oil, causing it to be soggy. I use an instant-read thermometer and recommend you get one as it’s a super handy kitchen tool!
I rarely have an issue with the batter not sticking to my vegetables but something I do for my prawns/shrimp is that I give them a light dusting of potato starch or cornstarch before dipping them in batter. The starch helps the batter stick better.
Dip your vegetable or protein of choice in the batter to coat. Then slowly add a couple of tempura pieces into the in oil. Avoid dropping in too much too fast as it’ll lower the temperature of the oil if you add too much at once. This causes uneven cooking and can also makes the tempura soggy that’s what happens when your oil’s temperature isn’t high enough.
I usually don’t fry for longer than 5 to 6 minutes. Since I slice my vegetables thinly, it only takes 3 to 4 minutes to cook through.
I would not recommend making the tempura batter ahead of time as you want to use it as soon as possible. You want to minimize the gluten formation to keep the tempura crispy and light.
Check out my Vegetable Tempura or Shrimp Tempura post for more info on frying!
Tempura Batter
Ingredients
Tempura Batter
- 1 egg
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup water, ice cold
Tempura Ingredients
- neutral oil, for frying
- vegetables or protein of your choice
Instructions
- To make the tempura batter, simply mix the eggs, flour, and water together. Do not over mix, it is ok if the batter is lumpy. Lumpy batter has more air in it which helps give your tempura a light, airy texture.
- To use, dip your vegetable or protein of choice in the batter to coat and fry in oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot that is at 340F/170C.
More Recipes You’ll Love
- Chicken Katsu
- Taiwanese Fried Chicken
- Korokke (Potato & Meat Croquette)
- Hibachi Chicken
- Pan Fried Gochujang Pork Belly
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