How to make Tenpura batter

Tenpura batter is made in almost the complete opposite way to western batter, so forget everything you know for this one! The trick to good tenpura is to make sure you have really cold iced water, and lots of small lumps of flour. Tenpura batter is kept very thin, so more batter is added on top of the food during the cooking. With a thin batter, the food cooks quicker, and therefore absorbs less oil, keeps its natural taste, and most of the nutrients stay in the food. With a thick heavy western style batter, the food has to cook longer and gets more oily. With tenpura it’s very small details like this that make the difference.

How to make Tenpura batter

Makes: about enough to fry 2 full main course plates of tenpura

Time to prepare: 10 minutes

Ingredients

200ml iced water*

1 whole egg

140g tenpura flour

20g potato flour

plus about 50g