Tempura Vegetables with White Miso Dipping Sauce

Tempura is a super versatile and very impressive entree, side dish or even main course. There's a few technicalities that you need to get spot on, but once you get the hang of it - it's pretty easy to recreate time and time again. Something that brings this dish to life is my white miso dipping sauce, of which the main ingredient for that is the white miso paste. But don't worry, if you haven't seen it before, it's usually sitting in the Japanese section of your supermarket, probably with the other sauces. Make sure you get a gluten free one though - I recommend the brand Yutaka.

Tempura batter is a lot thinner than normal frying batter, and that's because it has to give the outside of the vegetables a slight, almost transparent, crunch, not a thick coating! You will notice as you are frying that the batter remaining in the bowl will seperate, so make sure you mix it up again before each batch.

I N G R E D I E N T S

Batter

• 1 egg

• 3/4 cup gluten free flour

• 1/2 cup of water

Vegetables

You can have as many vegetables as you want, but a rough guide would be about a handful of each vegetable. My recommendations are:

• Sweet potato

• Eggplant/Aubergine

• Broccoli

• Pepper/Capsicum

• Shitake Mushrooms

• Potato

• Courgette/Zucchini

• Lotus Root

Dipping Sauce

• 3 Tbsp White Miso Paste - I recommend Yutaka.

• 1 tsp tamari or gluten free soy sauce

• 2 tsp sesame oil

• 2 tsp mirin

• 1/2 Tbsp of white sugar

• 2 Tbsp water

• 1 tsp sesame seeds
  

M E T H O D

1. Prepare the vegetables by chopping into small, fry-able pieces. If you are working with starchy vegetables, such as potatoes or sweet potatoes, soak them in cold water for 30 mins prior to frying.

2. For the batter: whisk the egg into the flour and then slowly add the water. You should have a thin batter.

3. Lightly sprinkle a little bit of flour over the chopped vegetables. This will help the batter hold onto them.

4. Heat either a deep fryer, or high rimmed frying pan with sunflower or canola oil. Make sure it reaches around 170 and 180 ° Celsius before frying.

5. Dedge the vegetables in the Tempura batter and place carefully into the hot oil, making sure you don't overcrowd the pan. Depending on the vegetable, it will take around +/- 2 mins on each side for them to be finished.

6. To make the dipping sauce: combine all the ingredients into a bowl and mix. It's that easy!

7. Once the vegetables are done, remove them carefully from the oil and place them on a plate covered by a paper towel to remove excess oil. Lightly salt and serve with white miso dressing. Best eaten immediately.