Yay Tempura!

One of my favorite foods is tempura. Basically deep fried anything. There problem is, I can't just get it at a restaurant. Pretty much everything is fried with wheat-based batter, or fried with wheat-based batter. Plus, the restaurants pretty much all use canola or corn oil, and it's often rather rancid.

So I've been experimenting with making my own. We use good coconut oil or grape seed oil, and it never tastes rancid. I've been using Choice Batter or sweet rice flour to make the batter, and that makes a nice crispy crust.


The one problem though, is that often the batter doesn't stick. Even if it stays on while the piece is being fried, it falls off while you are eating it. Now, eggs can help some, but I don't like to use eggs because the batter doesn't stay crispy as well when it has eggs in it. Drying the fish, flouring, and dipping twice helps too, but not foolproof. Battering, rolling in breadcrumbs, and letting the fish set for a bit, that also helps, but it is a lot of work.

The other day though, I was mixing up some konjac powder, and for the umpteenth time I noticed just how sticky the stuff is. If it isn't fully mixed, it gloms onto the side of the glass, the inside of your mouth, anything. I mean, how awesomely sticky does something have to be, to stick to the inside of your cheek?

So a light went on. What if you mixed konjac with tempura batter? I had a recipe for shrimp that used corn starch ... dip the shrimp in corn starch/water, then roll in bread crumbs. I did this, but it didn't stick very well. Quite possibly because my bread crumbs lack the sticky gluten. So then I added some konjac to the mix. Voila!



Yesterday I tried it again. I use a cup of Choice Batter, a cup of water, just like on the box. Then I took 1/4 cup of sweet rice flour and mixed it with 1/4 tsp. konjac flour. It's important to mix the konjac with some other flour first, or it will clump! Added that to the Choice Batter mix, and a little more water.

Yep, it stuck. Stuck to wet fish, dry slices of sweet potato, anything. And made a gorgeous crispy crust.

In the first picture you can see the batter (cornstarch/water/egg) with no konjac. The cornstarch settles out to the bottom, but even when it doesn't it doesn't stick well.

The bottom picture has the same batter, with konjac mixed in. Sticks great!


I think the "keeper" recipe is as follows:

1 cup sweet rice flour
1/4 tsp konjac flour
1 tsp. garlic/onion salt (I mix garlic powder, onion powder, free-flowing salt, equal amounts, keep in a tight jar).
1/2 tsp. baking powder

Mix dry ingredients. Add 1 cup beer (or fizz water,  or water) to make batter.
Let this sit for 15 minutes.

Add more water or rice flour as needed. If you are using fish, and it is wet, it will make the batter too thin as you go, so then add more rice flour. Or you can make sure your ingredients are nice and dry before you start.