Are you a seafood lover? This recipe is the first seafood dish I learned from my late dad! Luckily, my mum still remembers everything! So even though I forgot, she can always tell me what to write! I called it Medanese style Spicy Chili Crab because both my parents were born in Medan (a city in Indonesia) from China and Hong Kong immigrants.
The combination of spicy, salty, and sweet makes this Spicy Chili Crab is a flavourbomb for sure. The difference between Medanese and Singaporean Spicy Chili Crab is the simpler ingredients and less preparation! I will be posting more of Chinese-Indonesian recipes in this blog with fewer ingredients that still deliver the maximum flavour so you don’t have to spend more money on Asian home cook meals.
Tips on preparing the mud crab: I am not comfortable to kill a live animal but for this particular crustacean (crab, lobster, and crayfish) dish. We have to cook it fresh, so we have no choice but to kill it seconds from cooking. First, grab a knife to stab in the middle of the crab’s stomach (triangle pattern). It will die immediately then slowly clean the whole shell and legs with a brush.
So, let’s cook Spicy Chili Crab!
Medanese Style Spicy Chili Crab
Equipment
- wok
- Blender
- Food Processor
Ingredients
- 2 pcs Mud Crab Cleaned
- 2 tbsp Fermented Yellow Soybeans Brand: Cap Angsa from Medan, Indonesia would be recommended!
- 2 tbsp Sugar
- 2 tbsp Cooking Oil
Sauce
- 25 pcs Curly Red Chili Chopped
- 5 pcs Garlic Peeled
- 5 pcs Shallots Peeled
- 1 cup Water Approximately 250-300 ml
Instructions
- Clean and cut the crabs into 6 pieces (2 claws + 4 pieces body), then crack the claws to open up its meat (to absorb better)
- Blend all the sauce ingredients with a blender
- Drain the fermented soybeans and roughly blend with food processor (still grainy)
- Get the wok ready and pour cooking oil into the wok
- Then, place the blended sauces and start stirring until its fragrant and cooked
- Once the sauce is cooked, put blended fermented soybeans and sugar to balance the heat
- Then, place the crabs into the wok and stir until its cooked and absorbs the sauces
- If it's too spicy, adjust with more fermented soybeans (saltiness) and sugar
Typically, this dish is better with female mud crab because its eggs will give more depth flavour and extra meats. But, recently the local fisherman suggested not getting female mud crab so then they can reproduce more crab in the future. (make sense!)
I recommend using the Indonesian brand Cap Angsa for fermented yellow soybean because it’s the most suitable for this dish. Typically you can find it any local supermarket in Jakarta and Indonesian grocery store in Melbourne. Please avoid using Korean fermented yellow soybean because it has a different consistency, we are looking for grainy texture and not a paste!
Feel free to leave a comment below to ask any question! Good luck!
