Monday, October 27, 2008

Tempura Shrimp

When making shrimp tempura, I could never get it to be straight like those served in the restaurants. They curl up almost immediately I put them to deep fry.

Internet to the rescue - I googled & this is what I came up with.

Remove the shell leaving the tail intact. You can also remove the vein but when making tempura shrimp I don't do it cos you'll see why later. Besides the vein is not harmful & you can bet when eating in restaurants, they don't remove it either.

Cut small slits across the belly of the shrimp making sure to not cut through the shrimp. If I cut the back to remove the vein then this gets a little tricky.

I usually make 4 slits even for a medium size shrimp. I used to do only 3 & it doesn't seem to work as well. More for bigger shrimps.

Next turn them around & press down lightly to straighten them up.

When done, make your tempura batter & heat up enough oil for deep frying. Once the oil is hot enough (drop a little batter into the oil & if it comes up immediately, it's ready), dip the shrimp into the batter & deep fry.

It should come up looking nice & straight like this.


Other than serving it as a tempura dish with tempura vegetables etc , we also like to use it in sushi rolls. Which is another reason why you would want it straight.

5 comments:

BeLive said...

Wow, that's a beautiful Japanese meal :)

petite fleur said...

Thank you S

Hang said...

I just made shrimp tempura and it became curly so I googled and found your blog. Thanks a lot!!! Could you also post the batter recipe as well?

Kurosaki Ichigo said...

Thank you for the tips on making the shrimp straight. I did find it useful. What I find works for me is to make sure that I bend the shrimp until the white fiber like string that runs through the belly breaks. By the way I was working with tiger shrimp.

Anonymous said...

what kind of batter do you use?