Monday, September 20, 2010

Make Your Own Sushi - Shrimp Tempura and Orange Chicken

After our very successful adventure into making California Rolls, M. and I decided to try something a little different for our next sushi making party. Don't get me wrong, the California Rolls are amazing. So amazing that we couldn't resist making another roll along with our new creations. We just wanted to try something a little more difficult. This led us to a shrimp tempura sushi roll. We loved this roll in our favorite little sushi restaurant, and couldn't wait to see if we could recreate it.

After tossing around a couple of ideas for other versions we wanted to try, M. brought up a chicken sushi roll. Not just any chicken, but fried orange chicken. Weird, unorthodox, but completely delicious.This went against any sort of "sushi rule" I had ever heard, but M. didn't care and he convinced me it would be amazing. And oh how amazing it was.



To fry up the delicious proteins, first shell the shrimp and leave only the tail. Be sure to cut the tips off of the tails to get rid of the dirt (or at least I think it's dirt) in the tips. Then lay each of the shrimp out to make it as straight as possible. For the chicken, slice a chicken breast into long, thing pieces. This will let the proteins cook quickly and give you long pieces to place in your seaweed wrapper.

Next, prepare your tempura batter. We used 1/2 cup flour, 1 egg, and a splash of water. Mix all this together. It should be a little thick but still able to be stirred around. Take each of your proteins and dust lightly in flour, which is going to help the batter stick to the shrimp and chicken. Then place each in the tempura batter mixture. When its completely covered, place directly in a pot of hot oil.

I have some tips from M. who worked in fast food and is a frying master. We did each piece of protein one at a time and then would place the item immediately into a pot of very hot oil. When you put a drop of the batter in the oil, it should sizzle and fry up immediately. That's how you know it is hot enough and you are ready! When the shrimp or chicken rise to the top and look golden brown, they are done and ready to come out of the oil and onto a clean plate. We found it was about 1.5 minutes for the shrimp and 3 minutes for the chicken. Finally, be careful!

Now the fun begins.

We paired the shrimp with slices of cucumber and some delicious yum yum sauce (recipe to come) for our first sushi roll. We made sure to cut off the tails before we wrapped it up. This was absolutely delicious! We had soy sauce, orange sauce, and yum yum sauce for dipping. I think the yum yum sauce is my hands down favorite, and its not even just because I made it.

Then we decided we would make a chicken roll next. We put the fried pieces of chicken in a bowl with a bit of the orange sauce in it. We just bought a panda express bottle of orange chicken sauce, but feel free to experiment with whatever sauce you like! Then we paired it with some slices avocado and rolled the whole thing up. Absolutely delicious. I don't care if the sushi masters are cringing, orange chicken sushi is delectable. Especially dipped in more orange sauce.

Does anyone have another strange yet delicious sushi combination we should try? Maybe a special sauce to use?

Shrimp Tempura

Ingredients
1 dozen shrimp
1/2 cup flour
1 egg
1 tbsp water
3 cups vegetable oil

Directions:
Peel the shrimp, leaving only the tails remaining. Then remove the digestive track which is the black line you can see on the underside of the shrimp. Take each shrimp and dust it in flour. Mix in a separate bowl the flour, egg, and water until combined. Dip each of the floured shrimp into this mixture until completely coated. Place the oil into a pot on the stove on medium high heat. It is at the desired temperate when a bit of batter put into the oil bubbles vigorously. Place one shrimp at a time into the oil. Flip after 45 seconds. Remove from the oil after about 1.5 minutes. The batter should be golden brown.

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