Kakiage (Mixed Vegetable Tempura)
Kakiage is a type of tempura made with a variety of vegetable strips, often with seafood. This is a popular home cooking dish as it uses leftover vegetables to clean up the fridge for the week. Light and crispy kakiage is so delicious to eat just with tempura dipping sauce. Also, see the note for making kakiage-don (kakiage on rice bowl).
- Prep time
- 5 min
- Cook time
- 15 min
- Yield
- 2 servings
- Difficulty
- MEDIUM
Ingredients
Quantities are shown as originally provided.
- 120 ml of ½ egg + cold water ((note 1))
- 6 tbsp flour
- A pinch of salt
- Oil for deep fry
- 20 g dried small anchovies ((note 3))
- 50 g carrots (, cut to 3mm thick, 5 cm long sticks (note 4))
- 2 stems of shallots ((scallions), thinly sliced diagonally)
- 50 g frozen shredded burdock or fresh burdock finely julienned
- Tempura dipping sauce ((note 5))
Instructions
- 1
Add the egg and cold water to a large bowl and mix well to make egg water.
- 2
Add flour to the bowl and gently mix by drawing the number 8 several times leaving powdery lumps of flour.
- 3
Add Kakiage ingredients to the bowl and mix gently to coat the vegetable with the batter, trying not to lose powdery lumps of flour.
- 4
Fill a deep frypan or a pot with oil up to a minimum depth of 3cm (1¼“) and heat the oil to 170C (335F). Drop a tiny amount of batter onto the surface, and if it hardly touches the bottom and returns to the surface, it is at the right temperature.
- 5
Place 1/6 of the tempura mixture on to a flat spatula spreading evenly (note 6), then using cooking chopsticks or a fork, gently slide the mixture onto the oil.
- 6
Cook for about 1.5 minutes, then turn it over and cook further 1 minute (note 7). Transfer to a tray/plate lined with two layers of kitchen papers to absorb the excess oil.
- 7
Repeat for the rest of kakiage mixture. If your frypan/pot is large, you could fry 2-3 kakiage at once but ensure that you do not overcrowd as it will bring down the temperature of the oil too much resulting in soggy tempura. I used a 24cm frypan and fried only two kakiage at a time.
- 8
Serve while hot with dipping sauce.