When first exploring the world of tempura, we noticed a disparity between the information available in English versus that in Japanese. Many of the popular English resources recommended that to obtain the ‘crispiest’ tempura, you should use your chopsticks to throw in droplets of batter into the oil after adding your ingredients. This would cause the droplets of batter to adhere to the already frying tempura, causing large flakes of crust to form around the tempura. This is repeated several times, slowly building a matrix of crispy batter around the tempura, sometimes even doubling its size. 

This was particularly interesting to us as many of the famous tempura restaurants in Japan, such as Tempura Kondo, Tempura Kusunoki and Tempura Niitome did not do this. They simply dipped their ingredients once in batter before frying and never added any additional batter. 

After some more research, we discovered that this was a technique called ‘making the flowers bloom’ (花を咲かせる) which is more commonly used by tendon, or soba and udon restaurants serving tempura as a side dish, rather than at tempura specialty restaurants. In these scenarios, the extra flakes of crust surrounding the tempura not only make ingredients seem more voluminous, but also allow it to absorb sauce and soup more easily whilst maintaining some crispiness. It is most famously carried out on prawns, with the body of the prawn akin to the plant stem, and the batter that surrounds it the flowers that bloom. 

Now with a better informed opinion, we can say with absolute confidence that the English resources, books and websites that claim it is the best way to make tempura are misleading. As we had previously discussed in our article on tendon versus tempura, there isn’t a ‘best’ way to make tempura. Instead the techniques used are similar but vary based on the specifics of the situation, and the final taste and mouthfeel the chef wants. In the case of high end restaurants, building additional flakes of batter around the tempura detracts from their emphasis of bringing out the true taste of their ingredients. However, in noodle restaurants where lower cost ingredients are usually used such a technique can elevate the mouthfeel and eating experience of the tempura. Instead, this is a technique that has been spread and boosted on social networking services because of its visual appeal and also because of how easily people take advantage of it to market themselves as knowing a ‘secret technique’. 

Our whinging aside, there are actually some finer details to focus on in order to carry out this technique successfully that we wish to cover in this article. When tempura is just added into the oil, it takes some time before the hot oil evaporates all the excess moisture in the batter, causing it to harden and form the crust. The time before the batter hardens is when the newly added batter most easily adheres to the tempura. After the crust forms and hardens, any additional drops of batter usually just roll off the tempura and flake off. 

Bear in mind that you’re also adding in additional batter to the tempura after it has begun to fry, meaning that if you leave a large gap of time between frying the tempura and adding in the extra batter, by the time the additional batter is cooked, the original tempura and batter would be overcooked. Conversely, if you took out the tempura just when it was perfectly cooked, the additional outer coating of batter would still be raw, resulting in flakes with a chewy and mealy texture and floury taste. Therefore, the success of this technique largely depends on minimising the time between adding the tempura into the oil and building the additional batter. 

It is also most successful when done with thin batter, as thicker batters take a longer time to cook. If done incorrectly. The flakes from thick batter tend to also be lumpy and roundish, resulting in an uneven surface and mouthfeel. A temperature of around 170°C is also ideal when attempting this technique. At lower temperatures, the heat from the oil is not enough to cause the batter droplets to break apart from the vigorous boiling of the water inside the batter, resulting in large chunky pieces of batter attaching to the tempura. This is a problem because it’s difficult to cook these pieces of batter long enough to solidify into crust before the tempura overcooks. It also means that the batter does not spread out and form the thin flakes that we desire. In other words, it does not ‘bloom’. Conversely, at higher temperatures the batter scatters too quickly and solidifies before it can attach to the tempura. From our testing, 170°C is ideal. 

Flower Blooming Tempura Recipe

You’ll want to only fry one of two pieces at a time in order to make space for the additional batter. After making your batter, fry your tempura using your usual technique. However, after adding your ingredients into the oil, gently use your chopsticks to push the tempura to the side of the pot.

Use your chopsticks to lift some batter and drizzle it over the top of the tempura pieces.

A lot of the batter will simply scatter away, that’s normal. However, a small amount should stick to the tempura. Allow the additional batter to solidify a bit more in the oil before repeating the steps. 

Keeping the pieces of tempura close to the side of the pot by gently nudging them using your chopsticks is useful as it allows you to trap some of the batter flakes between the pan and the tempura, allowing them to better adhere to tempura. Repeat several times until the entire surface of the pot is covered with batter flakes, at which point allow the batter to completely cook before straining out to use as tenkasu. Remove the tempura pieces and allow the excess oil to drain on a wire strainer. 

Flower Blooming Tempura Alternative Recipe

When dining at a famous udon restaurant once, we noticed two variations of the technique above being employed by the restaurant. Whilst we didn’t get a chance to ask about it, it was simple enough to work out. We won’t go as far as to call this variation a shortcut, though we have found it more approachable for some people to achieve similar results. 

Recipe variation 1

Begin by pouring a generous amount of batter into 170°C oil and allowing it to cook until just hardened. Next, use a wire strainer to gather all the batter onto one side of the pot, holding it there with the strainer but not bunched up together.

At the same time, dip the shrimp into the tempura batter and then straight on the bed of batter, before quickly pulling the flakes of batter closer together with the strainer. As the batter on the tempura is still raw just as it enters the oil, the flakes of batter already in the oil will easily adhere to it. Remove the strainer and allow the tempura to continue frying, flipping over once. 

Recipe Variation 2

*From our testing, variation 2 reduces the lifespan of your deep frying oil significantly due to the amount of water being emulsified into the oil. 

For this variation, you similarly start by pouring a generous amount of batter into 170°C oil and allowing it to cook until just hardened. However, you want to pour enough to crowd the batter pieces until they start sticking together. We recommend pouring some and allowing it to spread evenly, before pouring some more a second time. The heat should be set to high throughout the entire time to stop a huge drop in temperature caused by adding so much batter. 

At this point, you should have a matrix of batter floating on top of the oil. Dip the shrimp in fresh batter and gently place it on top of the matrix. The wet batter should allow the prawn to attach to the cooked batter. Using your chopsticks, cut out the prawn from the matrix and immediately flip it over to allow the prawn to cook.

The size of the matrix around the prawn you cut out depends on how much batter you want attached to your tempura. For this variation to succeed, you want the prawn to be able to just sit on top of the batter before you cut it out and flip it. If the prawn breaks through the matrix and sinks when you add it, the tempura batter you used to build the matrix is either too thin or hasn’t been cooked long enough.