Tempura Udon

BH and I had been craving for nice Japanese food for the longest time. Well, there are some nice restaurants here BUT it’s kind of costly to eat there on any normal day. So, I’ve decided to try cooking REAL Authentic Japanese food! 😀 Recently we bought some Japanese rice (which was supposed to be healthier) and I also updated my pantry with some Japanese condiments. OMG! Japanese food is expensive because of it’s ingredients! Anyhow… it’s amazing how much Dashi stock is required for each dish!!! and if u are wondering.. Dashi stock is actually MSG+seafood powder!!

I comforted myself that since I am doing the cooking… the dish is definitely gonna be healthier than the store bought ones… haha.. MSG once in a while it’s ok too… right? heh

There’s 2 parts to this dish:
1) Tempura prawns
2) Udon

Yes.. I pretty much spend the whole afternoon preparing food.. BUT I enjoyed it… The results… VERY AUTHENTIC!! I feel so silly spending $ eating at restaurants now

Shrimp Tempura Recipe
(taken from Justonecookbook, superb site for Japenese cooking!!! )

Ingredients:

10 Large or jumbo shrimp (if frozen need to thaw, the bigger the shrimp the better)
Corn starch to dust ( I used all purpose flour and it turned out fine)
Oil for deep frying

Tempura Batter [ Too much batter for me, maybe my prawns are too small.]
100 g (little bit more than ¾ cup) flour
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 egg yolk
200 ml ice water

Tentsuyu (Tempura Dipping Sauce) [I didn’t do the sauce as I figured out that I don’t need it since we are eating with udon]
1/3 cup dashi stock (or 1/3 cup water + ½ tsp. Hondashi)
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. sake
2 tsp. sugar
Garnish for Dipping Sauce
1 inch daikon, grated and squeeze liquid out
shichimi (Japanese 7 flavor chili pepper)

Instructions:

Prepare shrimp. Please read step-by-step pictures and explanations of How To Prepare Shrimp for Shrimp Tempura so that shrimp will be straight instead of curly.

You can start heating the oil when you are almost done with cleaning shrimp. You want to bring the oil to 170C (338F). You can check the temperature with chopsticks or with a thermometer. When you see small bubbles around chopsticks, it’s pretty much ready for deep frying.

When oil is getting close to 170C (338F), start preparing batter. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.
Beat egg yolk gently and add iced water and 2 ice cubes. It’s important to keep the batter icy cold at all time. The crispiness of Tempura comes from the temperature difference between oil and batter.

Pour the egg mixture into flour mixture. Using chopsticks, mix but only circulate around the bowl 10 times. You want to leave some of the flour unmixed and clunky. The key here is not to produce gluten in order to have crispy tempura.

Sift some corn starch on top of shrimps.

When oil is 170C (338F), dip shrimp in batter several times, making sure shrimp is completely covered by the batter and start deep frying.

Deep fry for about 2-3 minutes or so (depending on how many shrimps you deep fry at the same time and oil temperature), and after it’s cooked, place the shrimp on a wire rack (paper towel is okay but try to place it vertically) to get rid of extra oil. Keep in mind the more shrimp you have in the pot the cooler the oil temperature will be.

If you want your Shrimp Tempura to look like ones from restaurant (extra batter around shrimp), then you have to follow this method. Please see video below (in the post) as I couldn’t capture myself doing it while deep frying… My trick for restaurant style skin is to pour extra batter on top of the shrimp after it’s been deep frying for about 5-7 seconds. You can use a spoon to do this but DO NOT drop the ice cube in the oil or else it’ll result in possible accidents.

For Tentsuyu (Tempura Dipping Sauce)
Heat all the ingredients in a small saucepan over medium high heat. When boiling, turn the heat off and set aside.

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Kitsune Udon recipe [ I used Tempura prawns]
(from Justonecookbook)

Ingredients:

4 cups water
1 dashi packet
2 servings of udon
2 servings of inariage [I omit]

Seasonings
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. mirin
2 tsp. sugar
¼ tsp. salt

Toppings
Narutomaki (fish cake), thinly sliced [I used kamaboko, shown in pic below – I am thrilled that it is packed with a wood plank! This cost US$3.80 for a small piece! worth it though!]

Blanched spinach, chopped [I omit]
Green onions, chopped

Instructions:

In a medium pot, add water and a dashi packet and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook 7 minutes. Discard the dashi packet.

Add Seasonings and wait till simmer.

Meanwhile, open udon packages and loosen up udon by running warm water. This is an optional step. If you are lazy like me, you can just dump udon directly into the soup even if the udon is frozen. Also, I would like to mention that some brand of udon breaks up too much even if you gently touch it, like this brand. I always buy a frozen “Sanuki udon” from Asian/Japanese supermarket. The texture of Sanuki udon is much better than this udon, which I bought from an American supermarket.

Add udon and cook for 3-5 minutes (frozen one probably takes a little more time).

Serve Udon and soup in a bowl and top with inariage and additional toppings of your choice.

P/s: I also made Chawanmushi to go with the Udon – Shall blog about that another day