Tempura dipping sauce
Japanese dipping sauce for tempura (tentsuyu) made from dashi, soy sauce and mirin; thin, gently salty and slightly sweet.
Tentsuyu is the classic dipping sauce for tempura, made by combining dashi, soy sauce and mirin, usually in a ratio of about four to one to one, bringing it briefly to a boil and serving it warm. It tastes savoury and lightly smoky from bonito and kombu, mildly salty with a gentle sweetness, and is deliberately thin so the fried piece is dipped only briefly and the batter stays crisp. Grated daikon and a little fresh ginger are often stirred in to freshen the sauce and balance the richness of the batter. It is sold ready to use in bottles or as a concentrate to dilute at Asian grocers and online, and the ingredients to make it yourself are found in the same places.
Substitute:
It is best made at home from dashi, instant granules are fine, plus soy sauce and mirin. Japanese noodle soup base (mentsuyu), diluted according to the label, comes very close to the original. Plain soy sauce is no substitute, as it is too salty and overwhelms the batter; without dashi the sauce lacks depth. For a vegetarian version use dashi made from kombu and dried shiitake, which makes the sauce earthier and less smoky.
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