My Destination Singapore Kitchen - Chilli Crab

Welcome to My Destination Singapore Kitchen. I'm Chef John Sif on the Food Dot. Today I'm here to prepare for you Singapore's most beloved local dishes. Today I'm going to make you especially hungry. Let's dish up a mouth-watering chilli crab. Let's go. Let's look at the ingredients that we need for the chilli crabs. For the chilli crabs, basically you will need crabs, you will need some eggs, some oil, cooking oil, some minced ginger, garlic, shallot, some chilli, a little bit of cornflour, chicken stock, a little bit of salted bean, chilli sauce, and tomato ketchup. Okay, now we come to the interesting part. We're going to kill a crab. So first thing we need to do is actually make sure the crab is actually tied up in the string. And then just pricks open the back of the crab, get the chopsticks, and then poke it into it. Okay. After killing the crab, you know, remember to actually wash it thoroughly. And then after washing it, what I have to do is get one of this paper, make sure you tap dry the crab before you actually lightly fry it in some oil. Okay. You get a pot of hot boiling oil, and then you're going to put in the crab. It has to be sizzling. Okay, make sure sometimes there's water inside, it might pop. So do be very, very careful and gentle with it. Okay. Here you go. Lightly golden brown. You want it to be golden red in colour. Let's drain dry of oil, bit dry of it. Okay. This is actually a method to actually seal in the juice from the crab. Okay. Lightly fry. And then you have the shell also. This is actually a very beautiful garnish on the plate. Okay, fry until it's golden red in colour. Okay. You heat up another pot. Okay, let's heat up another pot with a little bit of cooking oil onto the pot. Any cooking we always do, remember, always start off from the onions. Okay. We're going to put in all the onions. Okay. This is actually small onions, what we call shallots. Okay. Ginger. Little ginger. Keep stirring and scrub off the bottom of the pot. Okay. Make sure it does not stick to your pan. Okay. If the heat is too much, just lower it down a little bit. Okay. Or it burns too fast, what you can actually do is you can add a little bit more oil. Okay. This will actually help to lower down the temperature of the pan a lot. Last one to go in is actually garlic. Okay. In most of the Asian cooking, garlic always go in last because garlic tends to burn soft the fastest. Okay. Which depends is a little bit more of oil. And then a little bit of salted bean. Okay. This is one of the very important ingredients in a chilli crab. Okay. Not too much. Okay. This is actually quite salty. Okay. Make sure you scrub the bottom of the pan. Okay. In all Chinese cooking, this is what we call for the char bun. Okay. This is the good stuff at the bottom of the pan. Then make sure you scrub it well. A little bit of tomato ketchup. Okay. So, for people who actually don't want it too spicy, it's actually two parts tomato ketchup, one part chilli. Okay. For people who want more spicy, you can actually go for one part, one part each. And then a little bit of chicken stock. Okay. A little bit of chicken stock. For people who want a more spicy version, normally I'll prefer a more spicy version. Let's actually cut a few number of chillies. Big chunks of it. Into it. Let this simmer and boil up. Okay. So, after putting in the chicken stock, let the whole mixture simmer and actually boil for a while. And then, this is the time where you add in a little bit more salt. Even though there's salted bean, but you still need a little bit of salt to actually help to balance up or draw out all the flavours from it. And then, a little bit of sugar. Okay. Sugar is very important in our local cuisine. Without sugar, you can't get the Annamiel taste. When this is done, what you need to do is, whenever you are cooking, always remember, taste it before you serve it to your guests. Okay. This is done. The crab that you have fried just now, pour it in. Here you go. And then, let the crab simmer and soak in the juices. Okay. Trust me, this is going to be very tasty. Let that simmer down in the taste. And then, while waiting for the crab to simmer down in the taste, I'll get four eggs. Three to four eggs. Okay. Lightly beat the egg up. Okay. Once you see that the juice is almost dried up, that is to tell you that your crab is almost ready. I'll just pick up the shell and make sure that all juices are actually nicely cooked in. Okay. What I need is a little bit of water or a spoon. Grab a spoon. Do a cornstarch. Okay. I'm going to do a cornstarch with this. Lightly we'll do a light cornstarch. And one very important thing to take note is, whenever you are actually cooking, do make sure that you actually season the taste before you actually put in your cornstarch. The moment the cornstarch goes in to the mixture, you cannot season anymore. Okay. Lightly thicken with cornstarch. Okay. Just lightly we'll do. Okay. Stir it and shake it for a while. Okay. The crab has soaked into all the flavour of the chilli crab sauce. So when this is done, very simple. This is done, very simple. Pour in your egg mix just over the top of the crab. Turn off the heat. Okay. And then get a cover. Okay. That's about it. Then leave it inside for two minutes. And let it, actually let the heat, residue heat actually heat up the egg and cook it just nice. And that's about it. Okay. The crab is done. We are just from the pot and then we'll just put it onto the plate and pile it up as high as possible. Okay. That is how we serve our chilli crab back in Singapore. Pile it up high. Okay. Get all the sauce and the eggs. And here you go. Okay. A crab on the right there. A crab on the right. Okay. And then a little spring onions. And here we go. All done. This is it. Spicy chilli crab. Give it a go.