Name: Fried soft-shell crabs with carrot & coriander salad
Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients: 4 soft-shell crabs, each about 50 g, or larger if you wish; salt and freshly ground black pepper; 1 tbsp rice vinegar; 2 tbsp chopped coriander; 50 g plain flour; vegetable or corn oil, for deep-frying; 200 ml iced water; 1 egg yolk; 2 tsp sweet chilli sauce; 50 g potato flour; 6 medium carrots, peeled and finely shredded; 4 spring onions, finely shredded at an angle

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Fish etc.

By Mark Hix

Published 2004

About

Soft-shell crabs are a weird phenomenon, although it is quite natural for a crab to lose its shell in order to grow - and the new shell, as it develops, is soft enough to cook and eat. I remember once being offered soft-shell lobsters by my fishmonger, which I couldn’t resist. I fried them in the same way as the crabs here and they too were totally delicious. If you can’t get fresh soft-shell crabs from your fishmonger, you can usually find them frozen in Oriental supermarkets.