What is Tempura?

A bag of tempura mix
by corrosiveheart

Tempura is a kind of japanese batter used as coating for deep fried vegetables, fish and seafood. One popular dish using tempura is deep fried, tempura coated carrot and sweet potato chips. As delicious as that dish is, our main interest in tempura regarding sushi comes in two other forms of tempura cooking:

1. Tempura coated, deep fried sushi fillings - such as shrimps tempura sushi roll.
2. Tempura coated, deep fried entire rolls - That's done when dipping an entire inside out roll in tempura batter, then usually rolled in panko as well, and then deep frying the entire roll. A very successful trick is to use melty cheese inside the deep fried roll, works very well with a philadelphia sushi roll added with parmesan cheese for example.