Tempura Battered Veggies (And Everything Else I Could Find!)

Ingredients:
Batter
-3/4 C corn starch
-1/4 C flour
-1 tsp baking powder
-1/2 tsp salt
-1/4 C water
-1 jumbo egg
-2 TB milk, more as needed

To dip in batter:
-1 sweet potato, peeled and sliced 1/8th inch thick
-handful of snap or snow peas
-8 spears of asparagus
-1 large carrot, peeled and sliced by length, then cut in half to make smaller pieces (see picture)
-other veggies like sliced summer squash, onions (delicious, highly suggest) etc
-1 small chicken breast, cubed

Mix batter ingredients together, adding more milk as needed to form a batter the consistency of cake batter or just a touch thicker.  Err on the side of thicker.  Before I added the milk, mine was really firm like a hush puppy batter, then I added a fourth cup of milk and made it to thin, then I had to correct back with a bit of flour to thicken it back up.  I suggest the 2 TB as projecting what I think I would have needed if I had just started off small to begin with.

Dip your veggies and chicken in and drop in a pan or whatever you like to use for frying.  Fry until golden brown.  I love the snow peas because they poof up when they are fried! I was not expecting such fun.  I would say most things are going to take a bare minimum of 5 minutes each side to fry.  I typically don't time frying, although I really shouldn't say typically because I rarely fry.  I don't always fry, but when I do I time it by looks not by time.  Golden brown.  You can also tell because the batter will get firm and not squishy.

The BEST part about this batter is it reheats AMAZINGLY WELL! Seriously, I saved the rest of my meal and put it in the oven on a baking sheet at 350F for 10 minutes.  The oil that gets trapped in the batter basically fried the veggies and such again making it even more crispy and tasty.  I was really impressed.

I don't like frozen food, I don't really want to go to a hibachi grill where I always get tempura, and I don't really want to order takeout most days.  Having a way to make a tempura batter off of things I always have in my cabinet was a serious win for this apartment.  My only complaint is since I did not have a dipping sauce, some of it tasted a little bland.  I sprinkled salt on mine when it came out of the fryer.  Keep in mind, however, that I am very used to using sea salt in meals and used regular salt in this, which I always thinks skews my taste buds.  You can adjust the salt level as desired.

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