Home-style Chilli Crab

Chilli Crab

While waiting for Daniel to finish his piano lesson, we went walking around at the supermarket when we found that the mud crabs were on sale for SGD$6.88 for two pieces.  Since I also had some left over chilli when I last made hainanese chicken rice, we decided to get 6 crabs to make chilli crabs.  Below is my version of the chilli crab which both my family and I enjoy.

Homestyle Chilli Crab

Serving Size : 6

4 - 6 mud crabs 
3 -4 tbsp of home-made garlic-ginger-chilli mix
1 thumbsize knob of ginger
1 bowl of ketchup
½ tsp of sea salt
1 tsp of dark soya sauce
1 tsp of sugar (optional)
1-2 eggs
Water
Sunflower cooking oil


Method:

Slaughter and clean the crabs. Cut them into smaller pieces and crack the pincers of the crab with a mallet for ease of eating later.













Chop the ginger up finely. There is already ginger in the chilli mix, but I prefer to also have chopped ginger, as well as it provides for different textures in taste.











Heat the wok, drizzle in a little sunflower cooking oil and stir fry the chopped ginger and chilli mix till fragrant.













Add in the crabs and sea salt and mix well.















Pour water till the heating mixture above till it half covers the crabs, add in the ketchup, dark soya sauce, and sugar and mix well. Cover the wok and let it simmer till the crabs are cooked and the shells have turned red.


Remove the crab pieces till the serving plate while keeping the sauce simmering in the wok.



In a small bowl crack the eggs and beat them with a chopstick. Drizzle the egg mixture in the simmering sauce, wait for a second or two before mixing it.











Drizzle the crab with the sauce and serve it with rice. The crabs also go nice with baguette or steamed or fried buns (mantou).






Home-made garlic-ginger-chilli mix :
8-10 stalks of Fresh Red Chillies
8-15 stalks of fresh small thai red chillies (optional as this increases the spiciness, you can substitute with the same amount of the fresh red chillies)
Sufficient garlic to make up half the amount of chilli
Young ginger, sufficient amount for about same amount of chilli
Put all the ingredients in the chopper and chop finely. If using for hainanese chicken rice chilli dip, you can scoop about 1-2 tsp into a saucer, squeeze lime and put a dizzle of light soya sauce over in the sauce, mix well and serve. Leftovers can be freezed (preferably using ice cube makers) and used later. I usually keep the chilli not more than 6 months in the freezer.
 

*Note:

The quality of the mud crabs vary with respect to the mating season. But on the whole, in choosing mud crabs, you should get the active ones. Turn the mud crab over and press on the underside, the crab shell should be hard and not yield to pressure. Most of the mud crabs sold at the supermarkets are the male ones, if you like the roe of the female ones, then you need to buy the mud crabs from stalls specializing in crabs from the wet markets in Singapore. The mud crabs should also be slaughtered just before cooking as the meat deteoriates very quickly after it is killed. One trick that my family always does in easing the killing of the crabs is to put the crab into the freezer about 30 min before the slaughter, this will help to immobilize the crabs a little. But you still need to be very careful when slaughtering the crabs as they will regain consciousness very quickly.