What is Vegetable Tempura?
Vegetable tempura is a deep fried Japanese dish, served warm. Any vegetable can be used for this dish, such as slices of mushrooms, lotus root or squash. The vegetable is placed in a light flour batter and deep fried in hot oil to create a light and crispy golden outer shell. The flavor is mild, savory and a little sweet.
What does Vegetable Tempura Taste Like?
Sweet is one of the five main tastes. It has smooth and round notes in its flavor profile. Sweet is a naturally occurring flavor in many foods, including fruits, berries, winter squashes, sugarcane, and honey. The sweet taste in these foods is due to a higher sugar content. Sweetness is characteristic of desserts and is used as an accent in savory foods.
Umami is one of five main tastes. It is savory with a depth of flavor. Umami is a taste in many foods, including meat, seafood, beans, and nuts. It is both naturally occurring and created through the specific use of ingredients to create a satisfying taste. Umami is characteristic of proteins and savory dishes.
Ingredients
Oyster mushrooms are a favored fungus in the culinary world. The have a buttery, nutty and delicate flavor and a velvety smooth texture. Oyster mushrooms are white, pale pink, or grey and have an edible and gilled stem that can be quite thick. The mushroom's cap is smooth on top and with many tiny gills that connect into the stem. These mushrooms can be used in many savory dishes to lend flavor.
This sweet potato has purple or red skin and yellow flesh. It is sweeter and milder than American yams. It looks like a yam with a long misshapen body and tapered ends. Its skin is thick and then cooked the flesh is creamy and soft. The satsumaimo can be cooked a variety of ways.
All purpose flour comes from wheat and though wheat is cultivated all around the world today, it was first cultivated in Turkey 10,000 years ago. All purpose flour is white in color and has a soft texture. This incredibly versatile flour is used in everything from breads, cakes, pastries, crackers, pasta, sauces and much more because of its pleasing and mild flavor that is slightly nutty and buttery. The gluten protein is what helps hold together breads and other products, part of what makes all purpose wheat flour so popular.
Lotus root is used in a number of cuisines and is the root attached to the water blossoming lotus flower. The root is cream colored, looks somewhat like a potato, but when sliced it reveals a circle of round holes. The texture is crisp and fibrous and retains a mild crunch when cooked. The flavor of lotus root is mild and tastes similar to water chestnuts. It goes well with sauces, as it easily absorbs flavor.
Vegetable oil is obtained by extracting oil from seeds. Types of vegetable oil include canola, sunflower, corn, and safflower. Light and with a neutral taste, vegetable oils are used to fry foods, or can be used to lightly coat meats and vegetables before roasting. Vegetable oils are also used as ingredients in salad dressings and sauces.
Eggs are an incredibly versatile protein and binder. Most eggs used in cooking come from hens and are usually unfertilized. Eggs are oval shaped and roughly 53 mm in length and 40 mm in width. Eggs have a hard, but thin and delicate shell that is brown or white and occasionally green. Inside is the clear and glossy white, with a slimy texture and in the center is the yellow opaque, round shaped yolk. Once cooked, the whites become opaque. Eggs can be scrambled, fried, boiled, and more. They are used in desserts and baked goods as a binder. Egg is also used as a wash to glaze items or dip meat into before breading it. The flavor is mild and sulfurous. It has many uses.
The pumpkin is a winter squash, due to its harvest being later in the year. There are specific varieties of pumpkin grown for eating. These are sweeter and differ from decorative pumpkins. The skin is orange and ridged or may be a warm creamy orange color. The orange flesh of the hollow, seed filled pumpkin is hard when raw and becomes very soft when cooked. The texture is stringy until mashed or pureed. It has a sweet squash flavor and can be used for dishes that are both savory and sweet.
Shiso leaves come from a perennial plant in the mint family and are also known as beefsteak plant. The leaves are common in Japanese cuisine and are either red or green. The leaves are small and wide with frilled edges. Red shiso leaves are often used to dye ume plums. The green leaves are used as a garnish and flavoring to be mixed into pickles, salads and even cocktails. The flavor is very similar to mint.
