Gluten Free Version of Tempura Veggies (you can use cooked meat as well)

So we were craving chinese food so badly but knew we couldn't have it so I looked around for recipes that looked like something that would taste good and I modified it so we could eat it!!!!! The original recipe came from: http://www.celiac.com/articles/22211/1/Tempura-Vegetables-Gluten-Free/Page1.html but here is how I made it! And honestly it was better than I ever imagined!!

This seriously was so yummy!!!!!

Tempura Vegetables (Gluten-Free)
 Tempura Ingredients:

2 cups rice flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon sea salt

2 cups cold carbonated water

Vegetable Ideas:

Sweet Potato

Yams

broccoli

carrots

cauliflower

asparagus

mushrooms

zucchini

eggplant

bell peppers

Yummy Dipping Sauce

Ingredients:
(yummy sauce that I served on the chicken and veggie tempura)

¼ cup gluten-free vegetable stock

1 Tablespoon coconut sugar

¼ cup coconut secret (you can use braggs or gluten free tamari also)

1 Tablespoon Rice Vinegar


¼ cup Water

Heat all the sauce ingredients in a small pan until the sugar is dissolved. Set aside to cool.

Note: The thicker the vegetable, the longer it will take to cook. You may want to blanch thicker vegetable like sweet potato before frying. Softer vegetables like mushrooms and eggplant do not require blanching. Also, try to cook like-sized pieces to avoid over or under cooking. I cut my vegetables into approximately 1 inch pieces in length, and ¼ inch in width. Avoid overcrowding your veggies and leave plenty of room to keep them from sticking together. Also if you use meat, be sure your meat is cooking thoroughly before dipping in the batter.

When you drop a batter coated veggie in, little pieces of batter will explode off the veggie outward like tempura fireworks. These pieces indicate that your batter is hot enough. The veggies should cook for 40 seconds to 1 minute and feel crispy when you knock them around. You don’t need them to be golden brown, so don’t wait for that.

To make:

Preheat coconut oil in your pan till it’s about medium heat, you want the veggies to sizzle when they hit the pan. You want to make sure that there is enough oil in the pan so they don’t stick to the bottom.

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium size mixing bowl.

Add the carbonated water and whisk until smooth.

Lightly dip ingredients in the batter (the batter is pretty thick but you want to make sure there is some all over the veggies, you may find you like them with either more or less batter on them) and immediately fry them until crispy.

Drain tempura on a rack or paper towels.

Tempura is best served fresh and hot. It cools really quickly I find!