Summer Wild Vegetable Tempura
This summer wild vegetable tempura is an incredible way to use up a couple handfuls of odds and ends during summer foraging!
Serve it with a bowl full of cold soba noodles to make it a full meal, or serve it as an appetizer at a wild Japanese cuisine themed dinner party!
I used what I happened to find while foraging that day to make this, but you could definitely experiment with other wild edibles and mushrooms.
Some suggestions:
Day lilies
Red clover flowers
Kelp
Dandelion
Blanched fiddleheads
Morel mushrooms
Puffball mushrooms
Wild leeks
Dandelion root
Sunchokes
Cattails
Purslane
Chicken of the woods
Maple blossoms
Black trumpet mushrooms
Wild parsnip root
- Prep Time30 min
- Cook Time30 min
- Total Time1 hr
- Yield4 servings as a meal with rice or soba
Ingredients
For the Vegetables
- Ox-eye daisy flower heads
- Common milkweed umbels (buds and/or flowers)
- Young grape leaves
- Young basswood leaves
- Young thistle shoots, peeled
- Young burdock stems, peeled
- Burdock root, sliced
- Field mushrooms, sliced
- Oyster mushrooms, sliced
- Cooked soba noodles, chilled
For the Batter
- 1 cup all purpose flour, sifted
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 cups ice cold water or soda water
- 4 ice cubes
- Neutral oil or lard for frying
For the Dipping Sauce
- 2 teaspoons white sugar
- 3 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons mirin
- 1/2 cup dashi
Preparation
Prepare your mushrooms and/or vegetables and set aside near your frying station.
Prepare your soba noodles (if using) by boiling for 3-4 minutes, then shocking in cold water.
Add the flour to a medium bowl.
Add the egg to a small bowl. Add the ice cold water and beat the egg into it.
Add the liquid to the flour and stir gently just until it becomes a batter. Don’t over stir.
Add the ice cubes to the batter.
BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO ACCIDENTALLY ADD AN ICE CUBE TO THE FRY OIL!
Make the sauce by adding all of the ingredients to a small pot. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and simmer for 5 minutes.
Set aside.
Add the oil in a deep fryer or high sided skillet so it’s at least 2″ deep.
Heat to 340°F.
Dip the vegetables in the batter and gently add to the oil.
Do this in small batches so as not to cool down the oil.
Cook leaves and flowers for 1 minute, shoots, stems and umbels for 2-3 minutes, and stems, shoots, and mushrooms for 3-4 minutes.
Drain on paper towels.
Serve the fried vegetables and soba with the dipping sauce. Enjoy!
Notice how I didn’t have you scroll through pages of mundane nonsense to get to the recipe? Notice that there were no annoying pop-ups or ads? That was on purpose!
I want finding and using my recipes to be easy for you, not frustrating. That does translate into a lot of lost income for me though. If you made this recipe and loved it, would you consider “buying me a coffee” and donating a buck or two through the Buy Me a Coffee app? It will help me keep pumping out recipes like this one!
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