Fry Hard III: Fry, Tempura, Fry! - Recap

Alton recalls the many episodes of Good Eats devoted to frying. Pan frying, wok frying, sautéing, deep fat frying – many are represented by the array of delicious dishes before Alton on the table. But all are child's play compared to... Alton hears crashing noises outside and pauses, but it is quiet. There is, he continues, a dish of lethal cunning and devilish design, so terrifyingly brilliant it can only come from Japan. The house begins to shake back and forth and Alton slides up a window casement, poking his head outside to see the source of the commotion. He screams, for the one-eyed monster he sees is Tempura, a horrible fiend that comes ashore every hundred years to feast on the flesh of cooks! As Alton watches, chefs flee the horror, save for one unfortunate who trips, and then disappears down Tempura's gullet to the accompaniment of crunching sounds!

Is tempura really such a horrible monster? Alton says no. It is the pinnacle of the frying art, and it seems monstrous because it demands exactitude from cooks. Even Japanese don't often cook it at home; most of them go to a restaurant when they want it. But Alton proposes to face his fears with sound science, simple, everyday ingredients, well-tuned techniques and basic issue hardware. He's confident that he can morph the monstrous into... Good Eats!

In Japan there are various kinds of fried foods, one of which is agemono – deep fried foods. In that group is koromo-age, which refers to battered and deep-fried foods; tempura is an example of this style. It encompasses vegetables and fish lightly battered and quick fried. Before attempting it, Alton recommends seeking a specialty restaurant that does it well. This example guides the cook so he or she knows when the dish is correct.

Ideally the distance between the hot oil and the table should be very short; tempura is best consumed as soon as it won't actually burn the diner's mouth. At a “restaurant” Alton selects his favorite tempura food, sweet potato, before he continues.

Like a number of things perfected by the Japanese (from transistor radios to cell phones), tempura is actually an import. Sometime around 1494, Spain and Portugal (then the world superpowers) agreed on how to divide the world for the purpose of exporting Catholicism (a mission blessed by the Pope of that time), and of course to open trade. Japan lay within Portugal's part of the world. In 1549, a Jesuit named Francis Xavier landed in Kagoshima, Japan during his Asian mission, and began to introduce Christianity to Japanese nobles (missionaries typically tried to convert the nobility, this making it easier to then convert the common people of a land). Among the rules of the Catholic faith are various days on which the faithful do not eat meat, but instead fish or vegetables. One preparation technique for such foods was battering and deep-frying, and the Portugese explorers taught their version of this to the Japanese.

In 1587 the Japanese outlawed Christianity, but they kept the methods of deep-frying the missionaries taught, eventually refining them into a high art, as Alton proposes to do. To help himself towards that goal, he needs samples, so with a pair of chopsticks he deftly slips several examples of the restaurant's tempura art into a plastic zip top bag before he leaves.

Back in his kitchen, Alton examines his prizes with a magnifer. There are no outward signs of greasiness at all, which is what scares cooks. Amazing forces are clearly at work, but are they monstrous? No. Success instead depends on three things: food preparation, oil selection and temperature, and batter design. The batter must be light and crisp, flavorful but never greasy.

Alton's tempura choices include green beans, wide-leaf parsley (the wider the leaves, the better for this purpose), shrimp (head on and always fresh), and tilapia filet (a mild white fish good for tacos and tempura, and little else in Alton's view). In his root cellar (that was once a wine cellar and before that a beer cellar), Alton reveals other possibilities: lotus root, kabocha squash and bamboo shoots. But what he's here for are Garnet sweet potatoes. Any variety will work, but Alton favors Garnets for their size, optimal for tempura.

Tempura foods require a high surface to mass ratio because they cook hot and fast. To prepare beans, Alton simply nips off the ends. Parsley is just as easy: he removes the stems. Shrimp is a touch harder, requiring the removal of the shell and the legs. Tilapia is straightforward but the most work: split the fillet down the middle and cut each half into one inch long pieces. Finally, to cut sweet potato Alton brings out a mandoline (Thing first tossing him a mandolin – the musical instrument – before handing him a mandoline – the food slicing tool). With the mandoline, Alton slices his sweet potato into chips roughly an eighth inch thick. All this prepared food goes into the refrigerator while Alton ponders his oil.

Alton frequently gets cards and letters asking why he does not use a countertop deep-fryer. These machines, he says, cannot attain the correct temperature for proper frying, and are not as easy to use or clean as their makers claim. Worse, they are unitaskers, the bane of Alton's existence (with rare exceptions). Unless, of course... the camera pans around to several such devices which Alton has pressed into service hosting his indoor herb garden!

The traditional vessel for tempura is the agemono-nabe, a heavy, iron, wok shaped vessel. The heavy iron means it takes a long time to cook and the shape allows the cook to handle only a few pieces at a time. Alton rules it a tool for picky professionals and rejects it. There are also modern tempura pots. They are steel, which conducts heat well, and typically coated so they are non-reactive. They are also wide enough to accommodate a goodly amount of food. But they are expensive and somewhat difficult to find. Alton chooses instead a simple, cast iron Dutch oven. This is heavy enough for heat control, inexpensive and readily available.

Dutch oven in hand, Alton stops at another drawer to retrieve a thermometer that can ready at least 400° F. A standard thermometer allows a cook to learn both the temperature and its rate of change, which are important in applications requiring precision heat control, like tempura. Digital thermometers, in Alton's view, offer current temperature but aren't too good at revealing trends, making it more difficult for a cook to react properly for good heat control.

There are, Alton says, any number of oils available. He opens a cabinet that displays a few of the many choices, including sesame, a traditional option. But at the bottom of the drawer is his choice: ordinary vegetable oil. It has no flavor, it is completely biodegradable and with a little care, he can filter and reuse it. With oil and oven, Alton heads to the stove.

At the stove he begins heating the oil, reminding that oil heats faster than water, so the cook must keep an eye on it. While the oil begins heating, Alton fills a bowl with ice water. He'll put the bowl containing his tempura batter in this bowl to keep it cold, retarding the formation of gluten. Finally, he adds a pair of tongs and a spider. He'll uses these to move his food from place to place. To drain the cooked morsels, he fits a draining rack into a half-sheet pan and arrays paper towels on that. On his serving plates, he uses piece of paper artfully folded “off angle”; this is a traditional part of tempura presentation.

The Japanese characters for “tempura” mean something like “flower-like gauze” or “batter like revealing dress” depending on translation. To Alton, this means a very light batter. The original Portuguese batter was wheat flour, water and egg. Alton's experiments with this produced a clunky, greasy, nasty fried food like bad fish and chips. Something else is clearly needed. The problem Alton sees is gluten.

As he's revealed in previous shows, gluten is the mesh formed with the proteins gliadin (water soluble) and glutenin (water insoluble) into a mesh that gives breads their elasticity and chewy texture. It holds both water and fat, and that is exactly what Alton does not want here. To produce a good tempura batter, he needs to minimize formation of this mesh. To do this, he'll select ingredients carefully, mix them as little as possible, and make his batter at the last minute.

Rice flour contains no gliadin or glutenin. Replacing a portion of the flour in his batter with this ingredient reduces the amount of gluten that forms. Cake flour is very finely milled and so will integrate water very quickly. Alton chooses unbleached flour because bleaching cracks the starch granules, making them more prone to absorb water. Bleached flour will work, but the product will be subtly different, and tempura is about subtle differences.

Lower temperature slows the absorption of water and the formation of gluten, which is why Alton prepared an ice bath to receive the bowl of batter. He also replaces some of the water in his recipe with club soda. Its bubbles lighten the batter and make it slightly acidic, further slowing the rate at which gluten forms. And another liquid can help: alcohol. It does not soak into flour or contribute to the construction of gluten, and it evaporates at a low temperature, lending crispness. Alton replaces a portion of the water with 80 proof vodka (100 proof would be even better). The egg? That stays; it contributes protein to help the batter adhere to the food, as well as flavor and color.

Thanks to television time, Alton's oil has reached the correct temperature, so it is time to prepare his batter. To do this he beats the egg, then adds the vodka and club soda to make the wet team. In another bowl he mixes the dry team of rice flour and cake flour. Then he splits each team in half; he'll make half the batter now, and half later. (Some tempura restaurants make a fresh batch of batter for each order). He adds one part of the dry team to a bowl resting in the ice bath, then one part of the wet team on top of that. He whisks for ten strokes and then... walks away. There are still some lumps, but he... walks away. The lumps will work themselves out, and over-mixing promotes agglutination, which is what Alton's working hard to avoid!

Starting with the hardest vegetables, Alton prepares his tempura. That's sweet potatoes and then beans. He dips and carefully drains each piece, working with just five or six at a time – he doesn't want to crowd the batter bowl or the frying oven (nor does he want the oil temperature to fall to quickly). He also avoids touching the pieces to each other. When they turn golden and the volume of the sizzling diminishes, they're done. It will take about two minutes. He fishes them out of the oil with a spider (a kind of wire ladle) and moves them to his draining rig. The whole time, he keeps one eye on the thermometer to ensure the pot remains at the correct temperature, riding the burner's control as needed.

Next up is parsley, which will clump together in the batter bowl, but “bloom” apart in the frying oven. This one takes just about a minute. With a collection of vegetables, Alton takes a few minutes to enjoy this part of his meal. A purist might prepare a single food at a time, but Alton prefers the medley. He likes to dip each piece in a soy-ginger sauce which he... hasn't made yet. Oh, bother!

Soy-ginger sauce, fortunately, is not hard to make. Grated ginger, chopped green onion and chopped garlic go onto a resealable container. Sugar, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar and soy sauce (Alton prefers the low sodium kind) follow them in. A few shakes and the dipping sauce is ready!

With a second batch of batter, Alton begins preparing his seafood. Five pieces of tilapia go into the batter. Alton drains each piece carefully before moving it to the batter – skip the draining step, and the result might be unappetizing clumpy tempura. Batter sticks best to cold fish, so Alton works with fish right out of the fridge. About two minutes later, the fish comes out of the oil and drains. Shrimp is almost that easy; Alton holds it by the tail when moving it. Shrimp will need to drain just a little bit longer to avoid a greasy taste.

Proper ingredients, oil kept at the correct temperature, and ice cold, very fresh low gluten batter have tamed tempura! (And the giant Tempura monster, which Alton calmly orders to fetch the paper and wash the car before they play fetch!) A once-dreaded ten story tall engine of doom is now a docile culinary critter!

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