Transport Your Tastebuds To Singapore With This Black Pepper Crab Recipe From A Local Chef
Cooking at home has more or less become the renewed normal, with people flooding their social media stories with images of everything from loaves of bread to fancy looking dinners. While I’ll admit I’ve never been a particularly good cook, I can’t be the only one running out of recipes in my repertoire?
It’s the perfect time to try new dishes, and taking the opportunity to let your taste buds travel the world regardless of your body being stuck in one place.
It might be a while before you explore Singapore and feast upon the seafood dishes that make the city famous, but local chef Wayne Liew from popular restaurant Keng Eng Kee has been kind enough to share his recipe for one of Singapore’s most popular dishes: Black Pepper Crab.
One of the two most popular crab dishes in Singapore, this meal is made with hard-shell crabs, and fried with black pepper for a spicy, full-flavoured result. Enjoy!
Black Pepper Crab
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Serves four
Ingredients
- 2 crabs
- 800mL of water (depending on the crab size)
- ½ a red onion
- 2 teaspoons of dried shrimp
- 1 teaspoon of crushed garlic
- 10 curry leaves
- 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
- 2 tablespoons of crush black pepper
- 1 teaspoon of white pepper
- 2 tablespoons of chilli paste
- 1 tablespoon of black soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon of unsalted butter
- 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil
Method
Crab
- Wash your crab under water to ensure it is clean.
- Place the crab on its back before lifting up the tail. Pull the tail away from the body and then turn over the crab to pull out the contents.
- Cut the crabs body into 6 pieces and then remove the claws.
- Using a crab cracker (or the back of a cleaver) gently crack the claws and legs so they can cook more evenly.
- Wash the crab thoroughly again.
Cooking
- Heat up the wok or pan and pour in the vegetable oil.
- Add the dried shrimp, garlic, onion and curry leaves, and fry until golden brown.
- Add in the black pepper, oyster sauce, chilli paste and white pepper to the wok.
- Bring the wok to a high heat before adding in the crab.
- Cover the crab with water and black soy sauce on a low heat for 3 – 4 minutes.
- Add in the light soy sauce follow by the unsalted butter and cook until it’s just dry.
- Plate up your crab to be served.
- (Lead Image: Pexels)
