Last week I made J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Tempura Vegetables or Seafood recipe from his The Wok cookbook.

The recipe is straightforward, but I complicated it.

Kenji instructs to bring oil to 375°F in a wok and adjust heat to hold it there while getting the tempura ready.

For the batter, a portion of Kenji’s All-Purpose Tempura Batter and Dredging Mixture is mixed with vodka and “ice-cold soda water.” Like the Extra-Crispy Korean Fried Chicken, this is all in an effort to have a thin batter that stays crisp, not chewy from gluten formation. Kenji directs to mix the batter quickly with chopsticks by shaking the bowl while mixing.

Twelve ounces of vegetables or seafood are folded into the batter and then gently placed into the hot oil to fry. Kenji instructs to increase the heat to high for the minute or so the food fries to keep the temperature from dropping.

That’s all straightforward. Where I went wrong was in trying to bring some variety to the table. Kenji has a table of tempura vegetables and seafood, and I asked the kids which ones they were interested in. I ended up doing cauliflower, avocado, sweet potato, fish (I used catfish), and I added some carrot to bring the avocado up to a full batch size.

Doing an entire batch of each (four batches total) was just too much. If I had scaled down each ingredient to a single batch, there would’ve been a ton of food left over, but I think we would have enjoyed the tempura more. We were just overwhelmed by volume.

I would also drain the tempura on a rack in a baking sheet next time. Kenji calls for putting it on a paper-towel-lined plate or baking sheet (I used a plate for each batch), but I think it would have benefited from sitting above where the oil was draining.

Kenji calls for serving with lemon wedges or “dipping sauce of your choice.” I made all of his dipping sauces: Soy-Dashi Dipping Sauce for Tempura, Vinegar-Caramel Dipping Sauce for Tempura, Gochugaru Yogurt Ranch Dressing, and Honey-Miso Mayonnaise for Tempura. We ate this with some plain rice and salad.

All in all it was fine. If I do it again, I definitely won’t make more than one batch.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.