Dragon Rolls
A dragon roll is made for the eyes: hot tempura prawn inside, and over the top avocado laid overlapping like scales and glazed with dark sauce. The difficulty is not technique but patience — the avocado has to be cut genuinely thin, and every slice has to land on the one before it.
- Prep
- 40 min
- Cook
- 10 min
- Total
- 50 min
- Servings
- 4
- Level
- Challenging
- Per serving
- 480 kcal
Ingredients
The rolls
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What to use instead
Unagi sauce is easy to make: warm 3 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp sugar and 2 tbsp mirin over low heat for 5 minutes, until it thickens to the consistency of thin honey.
Tempura
Makes: 4 rolls of 8 pieces, 32 in all
Shopping list
The ingredients for the servings you chose — copy them or send them to a messenger. Tick what you already have at home: only the rest goes on the list.
Method
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Step 1: Mix the batter at the last moment
Stir the flour into the iced water with a fork, a few strokes only — the batter should stay lumpy. Batter worked smooth gives a thick soft crust instead of a light crisp one. Mix it only once the oil is already hot.
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Step 2: Fry the prawns
Heat the oil to 180 °C — a drop of batter should rise within two seconds. Dip the prawns, shake off the excess and fry 4 or 5 at a time for 2 minutes to pale gold. Lift them onto a rack, not kitchen paper: on paper the underside goes soft.
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Step 3: Slice the avocado
Halve the avocados, remove the stones, peel each half in one piece and set it cut side down. Slice across as thinly as you can, 2–3 mm, without pushing the slices apart — the half should stay standing like a little log.
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Step 4: Roll them
Cover the mat in film. Spread 120 g of rice over half a sheet of nori to the edges, flip it rice down, lay three prawns in a line with the cucumber batons and roll, squeezing along the whole length.
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Step 5: Lay the scales
Slide a knife under a sliced avocado half, carry it to the roll and fan the slices out with your fingers so they overlap along its whole length. Cover with film and go over it with the mat — the avocado should hug the roll, not sit on it in a heap.
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Step 6: Cut through the film
Leaving the film on, wet a long sharp knife and cut the roll in half, then each half into four. The film is what holds the scales in place; without it the avocado slides off at the first stroke.
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Step 7: Glaze it
Peel the film off the pieces and zigzag unagi sauce over the roll, about a tablespoon each. The sauce should gleam on the avocado rather than pool on the plate.
Tips & variations
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Tip
Tempura batter is mixed lumpy and cold. Smooth batter at room temperature gives a crust that goes soft inside the roll within five minutes, and the whole point is lost.
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Variation
A classic dragon roll is topped not with avocado but with smoked eel, which is where the name comes from. Cut the eel into strips and overlap them the same way, moving the avocado inside.
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Swap
Unagi sauce is easy to make: warm 3 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp sugar and 2 tbsp mirin over low heat for 5 minutes, until it thickens to the consistency of thin honey.
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Storage
This roll does not wait: the tempura softens against the rice, the avocado darkens, the sauce soaks in. The prawns can be fried 15 minutes ahead; everything else is assembled just before serving.
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Tip
The avocado has to feel firm, barely giving under a finger. A soft one cannot be sliced thinly: the slices tear on the knife.
Nutrition
| 1 serving | Whole dish 4 servings | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 480 kcal | 1,920 kcal |
| Protein | 16 g | 64 g |
| Fat | 19 g | 76 g |
| Carbohydrates | 60 g | 240 g |
Approximate values calculated from standard ingredient data.
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