Tempura Time!

The other weekend, I cooked. For real! It involved lots of preparation and use of the stove. And it wasn't easy either! You see, this day I decided to play with the magic of deep frying. After all, everything tastes better when deep fried!


We had a bunch of shrimp, and even some leftover pork cutlets, so we made both shrimp tempura and our version of tonkatsu, japanese pork cutlet. For the pork cutlet, I pounded the pork chops down flat using the bottom of a glass. I didn't have a tenderizer so I had to improvise. Then I coated it with store-bought tempura mix (just the straight powder, not the actual batter that you make by adding water to the mix), dipped it in egg, and then coated it with panko. Panko is a japanese breadcrumb you can buy. It makes everything fried taste great. Then I just pan fried the pork until it was golden brown. We did buy some bottled tonkatsu sauce, but after an unfortunate lightpole incident, the bottle broke. We did salvage a tiny bit of the sauce, and if I do say so myself, the tonkatsu with the sauce tasted mighty fine. F said that it tasted like pork mcnuggets. Hey Mcdonalds! Pork fried nuggets! Take notes!

So onto the shrimp. Peeling, deveining, and butterflying are always fun. Most of the time when I deep fry shrimp, I usually just use the tempura batter. This time, we went for the panko. So just like the pork, it involved coating with the tempura mix powder, dipping in egg, and then coating with panko. And then into the boiling oil it goes! Cook until golden brown. I used to have a fry daddy, but I can't find it. I have an electric wok that I use now for anything deep fried. I like it because it has a temperature gauge so I can set it to what I want, it has a little drip tray thingy, and it has a lid so the grease doesn't have to blast everywhere. There is also bottled tempura dipping sauce mix. Once you dunk your hot crunchy shrimp and the dipping sauce gets all greasy, it makes it taste even better. Yes, it takes alot of effort, but sometimes, you just need to go for the deep fry. Your arteries will thank you!