Tempura

What is Tempura?

Tempura is a kind of japanese batter used as coating for deep fried vegetables, fish and seafood. One popular dish using tempura is deep fried, tempura coated carrot and sweet potato chips. As delicious as that dish is, our main interest in tempura regarding sushi comes in two other forms of tempura cooking:

1. Fried sushi ingredients coated with tempura – such as shrimp tempura sushi roll.
2. A fired sushi roll – entire roll is coated with tempura – That's done when dipping an entire inside out roll in tempura batter, then usually rolled in panko as well, and then deep frying the entire roll. A very successful trick is to use melty cheese inside the deep fried roll. Works very well with a philadelphia sushi roll topped with parmesan cheese, for example.