David Chang Makes “Chili Crab” Noodles

Look at me. I just made this. It's so good. I'm gonna show you how to make Momofuku spicy chili noodles with sort of a version of Singaporean chili crab. I didn't realize we were making mukbang. Now I get it. Those mukbang maker creators have the best job in the world. You don't need mallets. We have all teeth to crack crabs. Ask any evolutionary biologist. It's true. This is honestly one of the best recipes you can possibly make at home. So when we were developing this flavor and I tasted the final iteration of the sauce packet, it took me to Southeast Asia and all of the spicy chilliness of it all. In one part, it takes me to sort of Sri Lanka. On the other hand, the same kind of heat notes and spices, because there's other spices in it than just chili, reminded me of Singaporean chili crab. So this is something that I'm gonna show you that is really delicious and there's a lot of different ways you can make a chili crab sauce. This is, again, a very loose interpretation, but you don't always have to make it with a crab. I've made this with just like picked crab meat. You can make something really stellar with crab meat and actually even canned crab meat can work too, but since we're trying to impress you guys, we're gonna do it with a whole crab, which I can't recommend enough too because you're gonna be able to get all the sauce from the body. This is a Dungeness crab that we've already humanely dispatched. And we're gonna get going. So I'm gonna use three packets of noodles. I'm gonna remove the sauce packets because I'm gonna need them. And I am gonna put some ginger, a couple cloves of garlic, tomato paste, some dou ban jiang, some chili crunch, some tamarind syrup, some ketchup mayonnaise, which is basically sugary reduced sweet soy sauce, which is delicious. This is very, very pungent. And this is a crab paste. And I'm gonna put the smallest bit. You know it's really a stinky product when it's sealed with wax. So I'm too scared to even open it all the way. And I'm gonna take that amount. That's the amount that I'm gonna live with. I'm gonna take a chunk of some palm sugar for sweetness. And then I'm gonna add the seasoning packets. So good. And again, reminds me of a lot of flavors that I love eating so much. That up, delicious. Grape seed oil or any neutral oil. And we're gonna fry this sauce and then break down the crab. Taking the gills and I wish there was a better way to say it, the face off the crab. Oh, that sounds terrible. But boy, are they delicious. So it's worth saying, taking the face off the crab. So I'm just stir frying the crab. I think a lot of people may not know that, I think people may assume that boiling or steaming a crab is the best way to eat shellfish in general. I would argue that frying, shallow frying, effectively this is what it is, is the best way. Because you don't lose any of the juices in the crab and it really concentrates a lot of the flavors. So this is an excellent way of cooking shellfish in general. If I didn't have crab, I could have used head on shrimp. A firm white fish would work. Some fish sauce. I'm gonna put a lid on this and I'm gonna start cooking the noodles. I know the instruction packet says, what does it say? Three and a half minutes. I prefer to cook it four and a half minute longer. This is Dungeness crab, but if I had my choice, I'd use mud crab. Mud crabs are probably my favorite crab to eat. Actually, I just lost my Virginia card because I just forgot about blue crab. Shame on me. So I'm gonna use this lid. A lot of people don't use the lids to their pots enough. I am going to now add the noodles. Sometimes when I do this, I will mix in one beaten egg into the sauce before I added the noodles, but I'm not doing that right now. Very good. Very, very good. It would be weird if I said it was very, very bad, but I have said these things before. Momofuku spicy chili noodles. I use that as a base to turn it into a version of Singaporean chili crab influenced noodles. Again, if you don't have fresh crab, you could use canned crab. Even the ones that come in the seafood section in a plastic tub, that works great. Is this traditional? No. Is it Singapore? No. Does it taste authentically the real thing? No. Could I have made this a curry crab noodle? Yes. Could I have made a black pepper crab noodle? Yes. But I just wanted to show you with a lot of the pantry ingredients that you might have with the addition of the Momofuku spicy chili and other products, even if you don't have any of those things, you can still make something delicious. I like to say this is spicy for people that don't like spicy and not really spicy for people that eat spicy foods. I just find this to be a delicious dish and it's a way of making something super delicious very quickly and a way of elevating just like a normal night of noodles.