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This Week in America's Test Kitchen: Shrimp Tempura

A few preliminary attempts at making tempura revealed to the folks at America's Test Kitchen why some Japanese chefs devote their entire careers to this one technique. Success hinges almost entirely on the batter—which is maddeningly hard to get right. Among other things, they settled on using the largest shrimp available, since it's easy to overcook small shrimp. Instead of a wok, they substituted a large Dutch oven. For the batter, they replaced a bit of the flour with cornstarch to improve the structure and lightness. For a super tender coating, they used a combination of seltzer and vodka instead of the traditional tap water. To see how they did it, watch the video here and then go visit America's Test Kitchen for the recipe. (Free registration required.)

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11 Comments | Posted by The Serious Eats Team, October 5, 2010 at 12:00 PM
Tagged: deep-fried, shrimp, shrimp tempura, tempura, This Week in America's Test Kitchen, videos

Wok Skills 101: How to Deep Fry at Home

I'd be willing to wager that anyone who complains how difficult and messy it is to deep-fry at home has never tried deep-frying in a wok. Why don't people fry at home? The most common answers are: it's messy, it's expensive ("What do I do with all the leftover oil?"), and it's unhealthy. Well a wok can certainly help solve your first two problems. You're on your own for the third. This is our second piece in this week's Wok Skills 101 series.

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37 Comments | Posted by J. Kenji López-Alt, June 29, 2010 at 5:30 PM
Tagged: deep fryer, deep-fried, shrimp, tempura, wok, Wok Skills 101, yuzu

Sort-of Edible Christmas Trees: Alinea's Tempura-Fried Goose on Juniper Sprigs

I love how the tempura bit looks like a root ball. [Photographs: Christian Seel/Alinea Mosaic] On the Alinea Mosaic forum, chef and photographer Christian Seel describes the technique and thinking behind Alinea's holiday-season tempura goose course. A layer of goose-infused stuffing is topped with a piece of cured and sous-vided goose breast, which is in turn topped off with an armagnac-plum purée. All that is skewered on a juniper sprig, battered, and fried in fat rendered earlier from the geese. The juniper is warmed in the salamander broiler just before serving to release its aroma. [via @gachatz]...

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5 Comments | Posted by Adam Kuban, December 20, 2009 at 4:45 PM
Tagged: Alinea, Chicago, Christian Seel, Christmas, goose, tempura

A Chef's Eating Tour of Tokyo

Lee Hefter, Wolfgang Puck's right-hand man and the executive chef at Spago Beverly Hills and the steakhouse Cut, visits Japan for a week every year for inspiration and goes home with new ideas on how to prepare the food at his restaurants—on a previous trip, a meal at a Tokyo restaurant where a steak can cost $1,400 gave him the idea for the ultra-high temperature plus wood smoke process he uses on his steaks back in Los Angeles. This March, two LA Times reporters tagged along to document the experience; Hefter gets tips on where to eat from chefs like Nobu Matsuhisa and Masa Takayama and does a lot of research, so if you're visiting Japan anytime soon do...

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Post a Comment | Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 14, 2007 at 2:30 PM
Tagged: Japanese, kaiseki, Lee Hefter, seasonal ingredients, sushi, tempura, Tokyo