This is the flower crabs which has very sweet flesh but less meaty compared to the mud crabs which is totally green. The flower crabs live in the sea.
Can you tell between a male and female crab? Just look at the bottom part. The female has a broad piece of ‘cover’ whilst the male ones have the ‘V’ shape ‘cover’. Sorry I didn’t get the close up picture of the live crabs.
Normally, I like female crabs because they have roes which taste really nice in a sweet and sour chili sauce.
To tell if the crab is fresh, I smell it. 🙂 I know some people pressed on the bottom part of the crab to test but heck, the shells are all equally hard to me?
One can easily fry some super nice chili crabs at home at a fraction of the price you pay at seafood restaurants.
Recipe : Chili Crabs
Crabs – about 4, remove legs, cleaned and put the roe aside (if any)
Red chillies – 4 stalks, remove seeds (use a few bird’s eye chili if you like it spicier)
Several pips garlic
Thumb size ginger
1 onion – Quartered
1 tomato – Quartered
1 egg
Chili sauce and tomato sauce to taste
Oil
Method:
Pound chili, garlic and ginger into pulp.
Heat wok, pour in some oil and fry the pounded ingredients till fragrant. Add in onion, tomatoes, crabs, roe and just enough water to simmer. Simmer for several minutes.
Flavour with salt, chili sauce, tomato sauce and knock in the egg. Stir to make the egg dissolve in the sauce. Taste! Taste and taste till you get the correct sweetness and sour taste. (the chili and tomato sauce will provide the right taste).
See? Few easy steps to yummylicious seafood.
Serve with white rice and if you like, wipe off all the sauce with some white bread.
mmm…crabs but i prefer mud crap to flower crabs.
Heh.. just caught a few crabs a few weeks ago… 🙂 yummy
Kak liliaaaannn
Mcm tau2 jek…Yesterday we went to Oriental City to shop for our weekly oriental rations, my husband dok suruh cook chilli crab… Nyummm…
Alamak Lilian, the chili crabs look super duper delicious. I just had my lunch, just looking at your pic it makes me hungry again.
anasalwa – My hubby punya fav. so I kena rajin masak. I prefer mud crab but he loves flower crabs. Another to cook flower crab is to pound ginger, taucheo and garlic. Banyakkkkk sedap tau.
marlinda – Resipi senang kan? I like simple resipi, bukan yang macam cookbook with so many ingredients. Hope you try and like it!
rodney – How do you catch crabs? With cages?
wuching – Me too, with lots of roe type.