Poo Cha (Stuffed Crab)

by - October 15, 2012

RIMG2741With over 2,500 km. of coastline, Thailand has no shortage of seafood. Take your pick: from surprisingly fresh -tasting made to order dishes in lowly street stalls and everyone’s favorite volcanic red Tom Yam choke full of seafood to crispy grouper with spicy sauce –sour, hot, salty with slight sweetness at the end. One of my favorite seafood dishes, though,  is Poo Cha .

Poo Cha is a mass of minced pork, crab meat and shrimp stuffed in beautiful blue crab shells, streamed and deep fried to golden crispy. Though I love this dish so much, I just started to learn making Poo Cha after I moved to Tokyo 2 years ago.  And to my surprise, I found that , although Japan is renowned for its vast amount of best delicious seafood, it was not easy to get fresh blue crabs with the shells intact here. So for the past few months, I looked for and bought only blue crabs with the shells intact. Patiently, religiously I kept their shells so I could make this at home. 

This past weekend the ziploc bag was so full that I could no longer zip it upOpen-mouthed smile. So I quickly rushed out to the nearby Asian supermarkets and got myself others ingredients-pork, shrimp, water chestnut, etc.- and started cooking this famous seafood delicacy. The end result was a plate full of crispy scrumptious Poo Cha which tasted so good. We ate the whole of them for breakfast. 

Below is my Poo Cha recipe. Try it out, I am sure you will like it.        





Ingredients 

 yields 3-4 servings Clock1 hour 30 minutes

 200 grams minced pork 
 100 grams crab meat
 5 water chestnuts, cut into small pieces  
 5 medium size shrimp, shelled and chopped finely 
 1 egg
 1/2 tablespoon Chinese cooking wine 
 1 tablespoon light soy sauce 
 10 dashes black peppercorns, freshly pounded 
 1 stalk spring onion, sliced thinly
 crab shells 

For coating 

 1 egg, beaten
 some all purpose flour 

 Thai plum sauce/ Thai sweet chilies sauce/ chilies sauce for serving 

Preparation
 1. In the mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients, massage with hand until it becomes sticky.
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 2. Cover and let sit in the fridge for 30-45 minutes so that the flavors will incorporate and mature. 
 3. Bring the mixture out of the fridge and stuff the filling into the empty crab shells. Steam the stuffed crab on high heat for 10-15 minutes. 
 4. Remove the stuffed crabs from the streamer. Let cool. Cover the fillings with some flour, dip the crabs in beaten egg. Deep fry until golden crispy. 
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 5. Serve immediately with Thai plum sauce/ Thai sweet chilies sauce/chilies sauce. 


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2 comments

  1. Crab used to be my favorite seafood until I became allergic (early 20s!). I could devour this dish if I wasn't allergic. Still tempted to try... Looks incredibly oishisooooo!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Crab allergy?-- that 's why I never see any crab recipe in your blog. Thanks for stopping by. Have a nice day.

    ReplyDelete