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What is Kakiage Tempura?
Kakiage tempura is the Japanese take on fritters. Various vegetables are sliced, shredded, or julienned using a cutting device like the Samurai Slicer, sometimes mixed with small bits of seafood like shrimp or sliced squid, dipped in tempura batter, and fried in oil.
Challenges Cooking Kakiage Tempura
Making kakiage tempura can be tricky, even for experienced cooks. Here are some common challenges people encounter:
Maintaining Crispiness: The batter can become soggy if the oil isn’t hot enough (ideally 340–360°F or 170–180°C) or if the kakiage sits too long after frying. Excess moisture from vegetables or seafood can also weigh it down.
Even Cooking: With a mix of ingredients like carrots, shrimp, or onions, some pieces may cook faster than others. Julienning everything uniformly helps, but it’s tough to get perfect consistency in a single fritter.
Batter Consistency: The tempura batter needs to be light and thin—overmixing or using a heavy hand can make it dense and doughy. It’s often recommended to mix it minimally and keep it cold (sometimes with ice cubes) to ensure fluffiness.
Sticking Together: Getting the vegetables and seafood to form a cohesive fritter without falling apart in the oil is a challenge. Too little batter, and it disintegrates; too much, and it’s clumpy.
Oil Management: Frying kakiage requires enough oil depth to submerge the fritter, but overcrowding the pan can drop the temperature, leading to greasy results. Bits of batter or ingredients can also break off and burn, tainting the oil.
Portion Size: Shaping the kakiage into a manageable, evenly sized disc is harder than it looks. Too big, and the center stays raw; too small, and it lacks the signature look and texture.
Flavor Balance: With multiple ingredients, it’s easy for one flavor (like strong onions or fishy shrimp) to overpower the others. Prepping ingredients to complement each other takes practice.
Japanese food enthusiasts often find that trial and error—adjusting oil temperature, batter ratios, and ingredient prep—helps overcome these hurdles. Pros in Japan sometimes use tools like a wide metal ring or ladle to shape the fritter in the oil.
Using a Ladle
For the recipe we will below, we will use a ladle for shaping the kakiage. Using a ladle helps overcome many of the challenges mentioned above.
Maintaining Crispiness: Focus is an important resource when making delicate items like kakiage tempura. Using a ladle lets us focus on matters like maintaining the right temperature for the oil.
Even Cooking: In addition to using a kitchen slicer to julienne tougher ingredients like carrots, by using a ladle to shape the kakiage, we can ensure that all of the ingredients get evenly cooked.
Batter Consistency: Because tempura batter is thin and light, it doesn’t have the ability to hold food together compared to other batter, especially at the beginning of cooking. You might be tempted to thicken the batter to help maintain the shape of the kakiage, but then you will sacrifice the light, crispy consistency that tempura is famous for. Shaping with a ladle removes the temptation to tamper with the batter.
Sticking Together: This one’s a no-brainer. Keeping the ingredients together is effortless with a ladle.
Oil Management: The ladle will prevent most instances of ingredients breaking off, keeping your oil clean and tidy.
Portion Size: Again, the benefits of using a ladle are easy to understand. With a ladle you can get portion sizes right every time without thinking.
Flavor Balance: Since the ladle removes many of the challenges you’ll typically have with cooking kakiage tempura otherwise, you can focus more on the fun part of cooking–dialing in the perfect flavor balance.
Kakiage Tempura Recipe
Ingredients
Tempura Batter Ingredients:
- Egg: 1
- Cold water: 160cc (about 2/3 cup)
- Cake flour (low-gluten flour): 100g (about 3/4 cup)
Kakiage Ingredients:
- Carrot
- Onion
- Mushroom
- Mitsuba
Prepare Batter
Crack the egg into a bowl and whisk it. Add the cold water and mix thoroughly. Add the cake flour and stir lightly with chopsticks until just combined.
Tips
- After adding the flour, mix lightly until a few lumps remain—don’t overmix! Overmixing makes the batter heavy and prevents it from frying up crispy. This might be a good time to sift the flour.
- The batter will really suck up the oil if it’s too thick. If you feel like the kakiage is too heavy, add more cold water. You can also try adding a ice cube or two to keep it well-chilled.
Prepare vegetables
Julienne the carrot, slice the onion, slice or shred mushrooms, break up mitsuba.
Tips
- The carrot will have a hard time cooking–julienning or thinly slicing is a must.
- Onions have a lot of moisture. That moisture can get soaked up by the batter and make the final result soggy. Adjust slice thickness or onion amount depending on your preference.
Begin Frying
Heat the oil to about 170–180°C (340–360°F).
Take the vegetables and dip them in the batter, adjusting the ratio or ingredients to taste, cooking time, and moisture content.
Place the ladle into the oil. Spoon the ingredients into the ladle and slightly adjust vegetables.
Cooking time can vary widely based on the mixture of ingredients. As we wrote in our guide to making tempura, look for the batter to turn a crisp light brown.
Tips
- Don’t pack the vegetables in–you need to give lots of room for the oil to fry the ingredients in the middle.
- Adjust the amount of oil to your desired kakiage thickness. Generally, you want the oil to come almost halfway up the kakiage during cooking.
Flip and Continue Frying
After the kakiage tempura has set and cooked on one side, remove the ladle and flip the kakiage with chopsticks. Continue frying until the kakiage turns a light, crispy brown.
Serve
Drain the oil for a short time and then serve while hot.
Ingredient ideas
Here’s a list of popular ingredients used for tempura that can also be made into kakiage:
Seafood:
- Shrimp
- Small fry fish like whitebait (shirasu)
- Squid
- Scallops
Vegetables:
- Sweet potato
- Pumpkin/kabocha squash
- Green beans
- Mushrooms
- Onion
- Bell peppers
- Lotus root
- Corn
- Japanese sweet pepper
- Asparagus
Other:
- Shiso leaves
- Nori
