Last week I made the Tempura Sauerkraut and Onions recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

All of the tempura was the same as Tempura Vegetables or Seafood, but the ingredients were a mixture of sauerkraut, onion, and pickled chiles.

First the sauerkraut is squeezed in a strainer to get out as much liquid as possible. Then sliced onion and pickled chiles are mixed in. I used some pickled chiles I had leftover from a previous recipe.

The vegetable mixture is folded into to the tempura batter and then fried for “about 1 minute” until crisp.

The fried sauerkraut, onion, and chiles are served with Gochugaru Yogurt Ranch Dressing.

I took my own advice from the tempura vegetables and let the sauerkraut drain on a rack instead of paper towels, but I made the same mistake I’ve consistently made during this deep frying section: I overloaded the oil. I keep thinking that this time I can follow the recipe as written, but time and time again I’ve seen that I need to fry in smaller batches. The oil dropped 100°F and never recovered.

The end result was fine, but more chewy than crisp. And had a good amount of heat, too. My pickled chiles were Thai red chiles, and I only had enough for half of the amount called for in the recipe. The gochugaru yogurt ranch dressing had it’s own spice, too, so it didn’t do much to help cool.

If we were really into tempura, I’d give these tempura recipes some more work to dial in the frying batch size and temperature. But we’re not really into tempura, so I probably just won’t revisit this.

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