Chilli crab recipe

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Rating:

4.5/ 5 stars 100 Votes
  • Cuisine: Singaporean

Alex Lee shares his popular Singapore chilli crab recipe with Food Safari's Maeve O'Meara.

For tasty variations on chilli crab, try Italian chef Alessandro Pavoni's crab recipe, or Vietnamese chef Luke Nguyen's crab recipe. Also, browse our seafood recipes for more gourmet inspiration.

Ingredients

Mud crab, well washed and chopped into sections
2 brown onions, peeled and roughly chopped
8 red chillies
Belacan, thumb size piece
½ tbsp vinegar
6 tbsp oil
1 tbsp tomato paste
400ml tomato puree
4 tbsp light soy sauce
½ tsp salt
4 tbsp sugar
Water
¼ tsp corn or potato starch, mixed in ½ cup of water
1 egg
Coriander leaves, to garnish

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Preparation

Blend onions and chillies in a food processor for 30 seconds.

Heat oil in a wok and add onion and chilli paste.

Add belacan and continue to cook until most of the liquid from the onions evaporates.

Add vinegar, tomato puree, tomato paste, sugar and salt.

Add tomato sauce, starch and light soy sauce.

Add crab pieces and continue to cook over high heat until shell turns red.

Add starch.

Add egg and stir through gently.

Garnish with fresh coriander leaves.

If you enjoyed this Chilli crab recipe then browse more Singaporean recipes, seafood recipes, easy recipes and our most popular hainanese chicken rice recipe.

Singaporean Restaurants

Displaying 10 of 42 Singaporean Restaurants.

  Restaurant Book Online Suburb
1. Harry's Singapore Chilli Crab   Sydney
2. Temasek   Parramatta
3. The Old Raffles Place   Collingwood
4. Singapore China Town Restaurant   Northbridge
5. Bismi's Gold an Fork   Melbourne
6. Ginger & Spice   Neutral Bay
7. Gingerboy   Melbourne
8. Katong Singaporean Restaurant   City Beach
9. Suria Cafe   Girrawheen
10. Raffles Room at Steventon Lodge   Tea Tree Gully

View all Singaporean restaurants | Start a new search

Comments (23)

Previous 1 | 2 | Page 3 | Next
07 Mar 2010 10:18 AEST
KST
Bondi
Doubling the quantities
Hello, would anyone be able to tell me if doubling the quantities for 2 mud crabs works alright with this recipe. I am actually looking to cook 6-8 crabs for a dinner party and am wondering how about I should go about with multiples of measurements. Any help would be deeply appreciated. Thank you very much.
Agree(13 people agree)
Disagree(4 people disagree)
06 Mar 2010 06:17 AEST
Ismael
Chattanooga , TN
Washing and scrubbing..
Scrubbing and cleaning is done to clean the crab because these are mud crabs and some mud are present sometimes. They usually cut the crabs while still alive and washes the shell afterward before cooking. I learned cooking this recipe while I was in Singapore for about 10 years.
Agree(0 people agree)
Disagree(0 people disagree)
25 Feb 2010 10:00 AEST
Michael G
Annandale
Chopping and Scrubbing the Crab?
I'm looking forward to making this but just wanted to know if anyone could elaborate a bit more on the chopping and scrubbing of the crab? Many thanks!
Agree(11 people agree)
Disagree(1 people disagree)
11 Jan 2010 04:38 AEST
Naomi
St Leonards, VIC
YUM!
This was most wonderful and I made it with sand crabs (best crabs at the market that day). We could have been sitting in Newton Circus having this! By the way, 2 Tablespoons of tomato sauce was the recipe in the book but then I changed the chillies to a green one and a couple of red chillis - still tasted authentic to us.
Agree(9 people agree)
Disagree(0 people disagree)
05 Jan 2010 11:33 AEST
TAC
Bardwell Valley
Tomato sauce
Agree, the recipe is very yummy. Used about half a cup of tomato sauce and that seemed to work quite well. Found that reducing the number of chilli's to about 4 made the sauce tastier.
Agree(5 people agree)
Disagree(12 people disagree)
03 Jun 2009 10:55 AEST
Robert Naumann
Mermaid waters
Tomato sauce
I just noticed that the recipe ingredients do not include the 'Tomato Sauce' that was added in the video. Do you know how much tomato sauce was added?
Agree(50 people agree)
Disagree(3 people disagree)
21 Oct 2008 07:24 AEST
Robert Naumann
Mermaid Waters
Chilli Crab
I must have at least 2 dozen recipe variations of 'Singaporean Chilli Crab' and this one is way up there with the best of them. Surprised at the absence of curry leaves though, but the end product didn't suffer at all.
Agree(23 people agree)
Disagree(0 people disagree)
   

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