Danbooru

Fried shrimp = shrimp tempura?

Posted under Tags

The first argument does have a point. Tempura, in the strictest sense, refers to shrimp that's been deep-fried using egg-and-flour batter coating. If the shrimp was coated with something like bread crumbs, it's technically ebi furai/fried shrimp.

Something to be noted is that tempura -shrimp_tempura -frye_(splatoon) is mostly shrimp tempura, so this would have a few consequences:

  • we'd end up having two tags that are basically for the same thing
  • our users will just use one or the other interchangeably according to their own preference because of the lack of implication

Do we have actual examples of non-tempura fried shrimps? What about non-shrimp tempura (aside from the hair ornament of that one Splatoon character, I will reach across the world to strangle canon taggers)?

nonamethanks said:
Do we have actual examples of non-tempura fried shrimps? What about non-shrimp tempura (aside from the hair ornament of that one Splatoon character, I will reach across the world to strangle canon taggers)?

First question: yes. Tempura in the usual sense is when egg-and-flour batter is applied and the result is a solid coat (e.g. post #5083891), Ebi furai is when bread crumbs is used, which gives it a more loose and flaky texture.

Second question: yes. Tempura isn't exclusive to ebi/shrimp since chicken, potatoes, and vegetables can be applied with the egg-and-flour batter coating (e.g. post #5265399 that shows potatoes and vegetables being applied the coating alongside the usual shrimp).

The categorical definition of different tempura variants is largely useless due to their indistinguishability in art. Asking uploaders and taggers to examine the chunkiness of anything beyond chunkeh asses is asking too much.

It's notable that the example images you give still have shrimp in them. Digging through search provided, there's a small handful of images that are fried chikuwa without shrimp, but that's single-digit examples.

Although tempura veggies are a thing and we have a fair few lotus root pictures, all of them also have shrimp.

1