What is tempura flour and how can you make it yourself? Chemical composition and nutritional value. Useful properties and harm of an ingredient for batter, recipes and interesting facts about it.
Tempura flour is an ingredient for batter prepared using a special technology. The composition includes: fine flour from durum wheat, potato starch, rice flour, sea salt and several types of spices. Dry garlic and black pepper are often preferred. It is used in the national cuisine of East Asian countries (mainly in Japan) for the preparation of several groups of products - vegetables, fruits, rolls, eels and shrimps.
Features of making tempura flour
To make a real Japanese dish, the batter ingredient is best purchased at the store. A self-respecting Japanese chef will never tell anyone how to make tempura breading flour - each school has its own traditions.
If you cannot buy the desired product, the ingredient is mixed independently: 1 part each of potato starch, wheat, corn or rice flour, a little sea salt - so that the taste is slightly felt. Sometimes they add ground pepper and dry garlic, but on the tip of a knife. It is undesirable to introduce any more seasonings. However, it will still not work to make batter, as in Japanese restaurants.
But if you want to cook the tempura dough more tender, to increase the enveloping properties, then use the usual baking powder. A dish prepared with a similar ingredient tastes almost the same as in Japanese restaurants. The main thing is to make the batter correctly, observing national traditions and proportions indicated in the recipes.
Important! Thanks to batter with tempura flour, the products acquire a special taste and retain all the useful properties. They become juicier and absorbed faster.
Composition and calorie content of tempura flour
The nutritional value of the ingredient for batter is quite high. Losing weight should think about introducing dishes made using a special technology into their diet.
The calorie content of tempura flour is 334 kcal per 100 g, of which:
- Proteins - 10, 8 g;
- Fats - 1, 3 g;
- Carbohydrates - 69, 9 g.
Vitamins per 100 g:
- Vitamin E, alpha-tocopherol - 0.2 mg;
- Vitamin B1, thiamine - 0, 12 mg;
- Vitamin B2, riboflavin - 0.05 mg;
- Vitamin PP, nicotinic acid - 0.6 mg;
- Vitamin B6, pyridoxine - 0.03 mg;
- Folate - 8 mcg;
- Vitamin B5, pantothenic acid - 0.47 mg.
Minerals per 100 g:
- Sodium - 77 mg;
- Potassium - 150 mg;
- Calcium - 45 mg;
- Magnesium - 11 mg;
- Phosphorus - 100 mg;
- Iron - 0.6 mg;
- Zinc - 0.3 mg;
- Copper - 0.08 mg;
- Manganese - 0.44 mg
Tempura flour contains the most of these substances. It also contains a small amount of the lutein + zeaxanthin complex, betaine, cobalt, molybdenum.
A feature of Japanese cuisine is its multicomponent nature, and dishes made by skilled chefs are the standard of healthy food. Japanese batter can also be used by those who, due to individual contraindications, have already forgotten the taste of fried foods.
Useful properties of tempura flour
Due to its complex composition, the product has a beneficial effect on the body, although it does not have a therapeutic effect.
Benefits of tempura flour:
- It slows down the onset of age-related changes at the cellular level, stimulates regeneration processes in the epithelium, and has anti-inflammatory properties.
- Improves brain function, increases concentration.
- Normalizes heart rate.
- Increases the production of red blood cells, accelerates blood flow, increasing the tone of the vascular walls.
- Prevents the development of stomatitis and conjunctivitis.
- Stabilizes the functioning of the optic nerve, reduces the incidence of night blindness.
- Stops the development of osteoporosis and caries, reduces the exacerbation of arthritis and rheumatism, improves the quality of teeth, hair and nails.
- Increases the local immunity of the skin.
- Stimulates metabolism, lipid-protein metabolism, promotes the assimilation of the vitamin-mineral complex from the products that are consumed during the meal.
- Normalizes the work of muscle and nervous tissue, suppresses cramps, prevents the development of insomnia, helps to recover from physical and emotional overload.
- Stimulates the production of digestive enzymes and bile salts.
- Helps to retain fluid in the body.
The beneficial properties of tempura flour include the fact that products in batter made from it can be introduced, albeit in small quantities, into the diet of patients with diabetes mellitus and atherosclerosis. Recommendation: carefully analyze which foods are fried so that the condition does not worsen.
Contraindications and harm of tempura flour
An absolute contraindication for cooking using this technology, with the addition of an ingredient for batter, is an individual intolerance to the constituents of flour. By making it yourself, the unwanted component can be eliminated. For people suffering from polyvalent allergies, it is better to completely abandon the store product. It is not known exactly what is included in it - as already mentioned, manufacturers keep professional secrets.
Tempura with flour can harm people suffering from diseases of the digestive tract - peptic ulcer, Crohn's disease, diverticulitis. But this warning only applies to regular use. Fried increases the possibility of malignant erosion and neoplasms.
You should not get acquainted with a new dish for chronic pancreatitis and biliary dyskinesia in the exacerbation stage. If the volume of the figure is far from perfect or there is a history of obesity, you will have to limit the consumption to a small piece.
Tempura flour recipes
The peculiarity of batter preparation is stirring. It is necessary to do this in such a way that flour lumps and, of course, air bubbles are preserved. Storage is not allowed. If you plan to cook for a large number of guests, the batter is updated several times. You cannot put different types of vegetables in the same mixture.
It is considered a culinary crime if, after frying seafood, the same batter is used to cook vegetables, or vice versa.
Tempura flour recipes:
- Shrimps … The amount of batter is designed for 0.5 kg of raw king prawns. Japanese chefs will never allow themselves to use frozen seafood, but in European conditions it is impossible to find fresh ones. Correct cleansing is carried out according to the following algorithm: the shrimps are thawed, the heads are separated, and the tail is gently pulled by the hand to remove the whole shell. To facilitate the action, the legs are first cut off - if there is a bag of caviar on them, it is laid, and then the shell on the stomach is cut with a sharp knife. After removing the chitin, the dark esophagus with waste products is pulled out. The peeled shrimp are washed under running cold water. In ice water, 1 glass, drive an egg and add tempura flour. The quantity is determined by eye - the consistency of the dough should be the same as for baking pancakes, that is, not very liquid. Stir from bottom to top so that there is a maximum amount of air bubbles in the batter. Preheat a frying pan, pour in sunflower oil, so that the shrimps are drowning in it. They take each by the tail, immerse it in the dough, and then transfer it to the pan. Fry on both sides for 1, 5-2 minutes. The cooked shrimp are laid out on a thick paper towel to remove excess oil.
- Vegetables with sauce … First, two types of sauces are made. To make Romesco, put the oven to preheat (the regulator is set at 200 ° C. On a baking sheet, generously greased with refined sunflower oil, spread 4 whole tomatoes, half a garlic head, no hard peel, 2 Spanish sweet peppers (niorra variety), 1 piece baked for 10 minutes, remove the pepper and bread, and leave the rest in the oven for another 15 minutes Peel the vegetables, cut the bread into pieces, put everything in a blender bowl and add 1/3 of the chili pod, 50 g of fried almonds, 20 g hazelnuts, wine vinegar - 1 tbsp. l., a little salt. All mix, pour in half a glass of olive oil and turn on the blender again. For the second "Tartar" sauce, cut 2 onions with green feathers, pour into the blender bowl, put the yolk there boiled egg and pour in a glass of mayonnaise. Both sauces are put in the refrigerator and are engaged in vegetables. Peel 3 red onions and cut into rings, 2 colored sweet peppers - cut into thick strips, zucchini and eggplant section sprinkle with circles. Only then are the ingredients for the batter mixed - in 150 ml of dark beer previously cooled in the freezer, the yolk is driven in and 150 g of tempura are poured. Heat olive oil in a deep thick-walled frying pan, dip vegetables into it on a slotted spoon for 2 minutes. Blot with paper towels and place immediately on plates. Serve vegetables hot and sauces cold.
- Fish with tempura batter flour, made by yourself. White rice is washed and dried one day before the planned preparation of the dish. Then it is ground on a coffee grinder. Mix in the proportion: wheat and rice flour, starch - 2: 1: 1. 500 g of sea fish fillets are cut into oblong portions, onion - 2 pieces - into rings. Paper towels are spread in advance to get rid of excess oil later. To make a batter, beat 3 egg whites with 1/4 tbsp. chilled white wine and 100 g of ice water, add homemade flour mixture, stir. Sunflower oil is heated in a cauldron so that it boils, fish pieces are lowered. When a ruddy crust appears, they spread everything on a paper towel. The second batch of batter is mixed - now vegetables are fried in it. When frying, you need to make sure that the oil soaks the batter, and the vegetables become only slightly softer. The Japanese do not cook fish either, but the taste is too unusual for a European. While the oil is draining, a salad is quickly made: grated daikon is mixed with sliced seaweed, a handful of boiled rice, wasabi and seasoned with soy sauce. Hot tempura served with salad is a great sake snack.
- Rolls in tempura flour … Rice, 100 g, washed in cold water, boiled for 15 minutes, let it brew for half an hour. Poured into cereals in 1 tbsp. l. sugar, sea salt and pour in the same amount of rice vinegar. Nori soak, cut into 2 parts. Spread the mat to form rolls, lay the nori upside down, spread the rice in an even layer. 40 g of lightly salted salmon are cut into thin slices and placed on rice, sprinkled with cream cheese crumbs. Form a roll. According to the same algorithm, one more is collapsed. Heat the cauldron over the fire, pour in sunflower oil and quickly knead the batter. Beat 1 egg in ice water, add a little sea salt and flour. You need so much tempura to make a dough like for pancakes. Rolls are fried on both sides for a minute, holding with chopsticks. After dipping in batter, you can dip it in bread crumbs. In Japanese restaurants, the dish is called American Roru.
The Japanese use tempura flour not only for making batter. Rice with wine sauce is cooked with it, it is added to buckwheat noodles.
Interesting facts about tempura flour
Despite the fact that the cooking technology is considered Japanese, Portuguese Catholic missionaries were the first manufacturers of dishes. In unfamiliar conditions with foods unfamiliar to European stomachs, fasting and staying vigorous was very difficult, and to increase the nutritional value, the Portuguese began to fry vegetables in batter.
The Japanese liked the method of cooking, and, having improved the recipe for the base of batter, created a whole cult of "tempura". There are the following theories of the origin of the name. From the Portuguese "temple" - "templo" or "spice" - "tempero", "post" - "Quatro temporas". The original Japanese name was "namban riori", that is, "barbarian cuisine." And the technology received its modern name 400 years ago, after improvement.
It was the Japanese chefs who suggested mixing flour from several ingredients, “expelled” the yeast from the composition, and introduced various spices. If the Portuguese fried only fish in batter, the Japanese immersed seafood, vegetables and even fruits in it, experimentally determined the optimal cooking time, at which the beneficial properties of the products were completely preserved.
How to cook tempura shrimp - watch the video:
