We share with you our recipes, reviews, tips and thoughts on building a happy home together through food.
To avoid getting bored on Veggie Thursday’s, the one day in the week where I eat no meat (and to be honest, crave for on occasion), I’ve taken to experimenting with new vegetables and techniques. My endeavor for tonight was to finally use up the container of baby-corns the wifey and I had picked up on a whim a week or so ago, but had been too lazy make a Chinese dish out of as we’d originally intended. I was still not feeling like putting too much effort in to preparing them, so the answer simply was to go a little more East and prepare an easy, simple, Japanese-style tempura batter and deep fry them.
Ok, so this was a bit of an easy way out - who doesn’t enjoy vegetables battered (the good kind involving flour and water) and deep-fried into an appetizers? But tempura-style deep frying involves no fussy seasonings and a very thin crust of batter, allowing the natural flavors of the vegetables to take the foreground. Deep frying them at a high temperature for very little time ensures a crispy exterior while keeping the amount of absorbed oil to a minimum. Just a few cracks of sea salt over the hot tempura is all the additional flavoring you need – like I said, not very fussy at all, and perfectly easy and appetizing for a tiring Thursday evening!
Babycorn has such a delicate flavor and an amazing texture – biting into the tempura add a little crunch to the rough and chewy vegetable. Corn is also a healthy, light vegetable which is available pretty much all year round around where I live, and now that I know an easy way to use up any babycorn we forget to use, it may just become a new staple around our house!
THE RECIPE: BABYCORN TEMPURA
YOU’LL NEED:
- 1 small container of Babycorns
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup ice-cold water
- salt to taste (preferably sea salt)
- Vegetable oil to fry
THE RECIPE:
- Pre-heat oil to 375degress
- Whisk together the water and flour to make a light batter
- Do NOT overmix; it is ok to leave some lumps in the batter
- Toss in babycorn pieces and mix to coat each piece fully with the batter
- Working in batches, immerse the babycorn into the oil and fry for 2-3 mins; remove when crispy and light brown
- Check the first batch in about 2mins; you don’t want the tempura to become dark brown
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- Ensure the water is really ice-cold. I leave a few ice cubes in the batter to ensure it remains cold through the various batches; cold batter = crispy tempura.
It bears repeating – do not overmix the batter. It is ok, in fact preferable if you want to be really authentic, to have some lumps in the batter. These lumps will lead to air-pockets that will blow up into nice crunchy holes in your tempura.- This recipe works well for carrots and green peppers also. I usually throw in whatever other veggies I have on hand to the remaining batter – might as well use them up when the oil is hot!
- I first started using this batter to make Shrimp Tempura, one of my favorite dishes of all time, and will post a step-by-step of it at some point. Just be careful when using raw seafood – you may want to cook it a bit longer than the veggies.