Photo: m-louis from Ichinomiya, Aichi · CC BY-SA 2.0
Tenmusu (Rice Balls with Shrimp Tempura)
Bite-sized rice balls with a small shrimp tempura inside, wrapped in nori. They began in the 1950s as a staff meal at a tempura shop in Tsu, Mie, and became a Nagoya specialty. The tempura is dipped in a soy seasoning or salted while hot before it goes in, and because the flavour holds up when cold they are sold as bento.
Ingredients
- Tempura
- small shrimp · peeled, tails removed12
- soft flour50 g
- ice water80 ml
- oil for frying1 l
- Seasoning
- soy sauce2 tbsp
- mirin2 tbsp
- sugar1 tsp
- Rice balls
- freshly cooked rice400 g
- salt0.5 tsp
- nori · cut in quarters3 sheets
- butterbur tsukudani (kyarabuki) · to serve, optional40 g
Steps
Devein the shrimp and make three or four shallow cuts across the belly so they lie straight. Pat them dry.
- ⏲ 1 min
Bring the soy, mirin and sugar to the boil once in a small pan and let it cool.
Pour the ice water onto the flour and mix with chopsticks only a few strokes. Lumps are fine (deep-frying).
- ⏲ 1 min 30 sec
Heat the oil to 170°C, dip the shrimp in the batter and fry for 1 minute 30 seconds.
While the tempura is hot, dip it once in the seasoning and lift it out.
Mix the salt evenly into the rice and divide it into 40g portions. With wet hands, half-bury a tempura in each and press into a small triangle, with the end of the tempura showing on top.
Wrap a band of nori round each at once. Eat them warm, or let them cool and pack them as bento (serving temperature).
Variations
- Tsu style. The original tenmusu from Tsu salts its tempura and buries it inside the rice ball so it cannot be seen from outside, and it is larger.
- Kakiage tenmusu. Shrimp fried together with small pieces of vegetable.
- Tenmaki. In Ise, Mie, the shrimp tempura is rolled in nori and rice like a maki roll.
Tips
- Season the tempura while it is hot.
- Use small shrimp. One bite is the right size.
- Wrap the nori at once. The point is that it sticks to the rice, not that it stays crisp.
- Serve with kyarabuki. Butterbur tsukudani rather than takuan is the usual side, reportedly because the inventor's husband disliked takuan.
More detail and the reasons why (1)
- Tempura made to be eaten cold. Tempura is about the crispness of a thin, cold batter, and onigiri wraps its nori just before eating to keep it crisp. Tenmusu gives up both. The tempura takes up the seasoning while hot and is wrapped in warm rice and nori straight away, so the batter becomes a layer that carries the seasoning rather than a crust. What it gains is that the flavour holds up when cold, which is why it is sold as bento.
The basics behind this dish
- Deep Frying: Temperature, Batter, and the Second FryFrying is not cooking in oil so much as trading the food's water for it. Two temperatures, what each kind of coating is for, and why the second fry exists.
- Heat Control: Preheating, Oil, and Reading the PanThe same ingredients become a different dish depending on pan temperature. When to add the oil, how to read heat by sound, and which dishes want low heat instead.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
More of the same kind
More from this country
Sign in to edit.
Written with AI · how we check it · Edit history
https://cookiki.com/en/r/tenmusu · cookiki · User contributions are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.