- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Serving: For 4 People
Singapore Chili Crab Recipe
Any Singaporean would know this dish just by smell. In fact some say the Chilli Crab is a national dish of Singapore. The dish Chilli Crab was created in the 1950s by a lady named Cher Yam Tian in Singapore. Seems that her husband was the one who suggested she try something new and more flavourful compared to the traditional steam crabs. That was when she decided to stir fry the crabs in tomato sauce. Initially they thought it was too sweet, hence she added some chilli into the mix. She and her husband used to sell this dish from a pushcart in East Coast, till it got so popular that they started the restaurant Palm Beach Seafood. Over the years the recipe has been improvised such as adding eggs and thickening the sauce to what we're eating today.
Did you know that the Singapore Chilli Crab holds a 35th place in the list of 50 most delicious foods by CNN Go in 2011.
Even though the dish is called Chili Crab, it does not come out as a spicy dish.
It is promoted as the national dish of Singapore by the Singapore Tourism Board
Ingredients
- Mud Crabs - 450 gm
- Vegetable oil - 3 tbsp
- Plain flour for soft shelled crabs - 4 tbsp
- Fresh red chilies - 8
- Roughly chopped garlic - 8 cloves
- Spring onions cut in finger length - 2
- Egg - 1
- Lemon juice - 1 lemon
- A bunch of coriander
- Tomato Ketchup - 5 tbsp
- Sugar as per taste
- Water - 1 cup
- Corn flour - 1 tsp
- Salt to taste
- Dark Miso or Crushed Brown Preserved Soya Beans - Optional
Instructions
Make sauce with following ingredients:
Mix together:
- 5 tablespoon tomato ketchup
- Sugar as per taste
- 1 cup water
- 1 tsp corn flour
- Salt to taste
- 1 ½ tsp of dark miso or crushed brown preserved soya beans (optional)
Separately,
- Take a wok and add oil to it over high heat
- Add garlic to the oil and stir-fry for about 1 minute
- To it, add chilli and stir fry
- Add mud crabs at this point to the wok and stir fry till the shells start to turn red.
- Add the prepared sauce to the wok and cover it with lid on low flame till shells are red.
- To the crab and sauce in the work, add egg and streak with a fork.
- Cook on low flame until cooked completely.
- Add lime juice and then add in scallions
