Black Pepper Crab

Name: Black Pepper Crab
Yield: Serves 4 as an entrée or 2 as a main course
Cuisine: Asia
Ingredients: 1½ tablespoons kombu extract (optional); 80 g (2¾ oz) unsalted butter; potato starch, for dusting; 1 tablespoon sesame oil; 1½ tablespoons caster (superfine) sugar; 1 live mud crab; 3 spring onions (scallions), 2 cut into 3 cm (1¼ inch) lengths, 1 thinly sliced, green part only, to garnish; 200 ml (7 fl oz) chicken stock (Essentials); 20 coriander (cilantro) leaves; 1 tablespoon salt; 2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic; 4 cm (1½ inch) piece ginger, finely chopped; 60 g (2¼ oz) ground black pepper; 3 tablespoons oyster sauce; 2½ tablespoons Shaoxing wine; vegetable oil, for deep-frying

Preparation info

Serves
4
as an entrée

Difficulty
Complex

Appears in

Mr Hong

By Dan Hong

Published 2014

About

Real Singaporeans know it’s all about black pepper crab, not chilli crab! This is not a traditional recipe, but it’s ridiculously tasty.

Ingredients

1 live mud crab
80 g (2¾ oz) unsalted butter

Asia
Main course
Starter

Method

Put the mud crab in the freezer for 1 hour to send it to sleep. Once asleep, take it from the freezer and work quickly. Turn the crab upside down and make an incision with a sharp, heavy knife into the middle of the body, driving the knife down between the eyes. You can now pull the body out of the shell. Discard the tail, lungs and stomach sac. Wash the crab thoroughly under cold water to remo