Crab Curry
If you and your family love seafood, try making a crab curry recipe for dinner. Following these recipe tips will help you prepare the best crab curry, and you may find that this seafood dish will become a staple in your household.
Indian Crab Curry
When you want to know how to make crab curry and you don’t have much experience with curry dishes, this Indian-inspired dish focuses on the flavor of the crab and minimizes the curry flavor.
To make this dish, you need eight whole crabs, a piece of tamarind, hot water, two large onions, two large tomatoes, about 10 red chiles, ginger paste, garlic paste, grated coconut, coriander, cumin, turmeric, red chili powder, two green chilies (slit the peppers open), two tablespoons of cooking oil, and about three cups of hot water. You can also include salt in the crab recipe according to your tastes.
Gather all your ingredients and remove the crab legs. Set the crab legs aside and remove the claws so that each leg is split into two parts. Use a cleaver to cut the bodies of the crabs into quarters or halves. Set the crab meat aside.
Soak the tamarind in a small bowl of hot water for about 10 minutes. Mash the tamarind by hand to mix it thoroughly with the water. Strain the tamarind and set the pulp aside. Combine the onion, tomato, dried red chilies, garlic and ginger pastes, and all the spices in the food processor. Mince the herbs, spices, and peppers for about a minute and add the tamarind to the mixture. Grind all the ingredients until they form a paste, known as a masala.
Set a deep-bottomed pan on the stove at medium heat. Wait until the pan is hot to add the cooking oil. Add the green chiles and masala to the pan and cook for five minutes, stirring often. Add about three cups of water to the mixture, depending on how thick or thin you want the gravy to be. Bring the gravy to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer.
Add the crab to the masala and allow to cook uncovered for 10 minutes before removing the pan from the heat. Allow the crab to cool for a few minutes and serve immediately with rice.
This simple yet decadent recipe will make you feel like you’re at a fancy restaurant, and you can use the masala for other forms of protein for a quick and easy curry recipe.
FAQ
Before adding curry to the crab, you should make sure the crab meat is clean. You can do this by boiling the crab whole. After a few minutes in the hot water, the shell will come off easily and the meat inside will be clean. You can also steam the crab to keep the inside meat from being soaked with water. Or, crack the shell of the crab and rinse the meat inside with cool water to remove any debris.
Crab can be frozen and will stay flavorful and intact if you cook it before freezing. Cooking the crab before freezing will keep the meat from becoming discolored. After cooking the crabs, run them under cold water to cool the temperature down. Pat the crabs dry with a towel and clip the claws of the crab with kitchen shears. Pull out the gills, stomach, and mouth of the crab and discard these pieces. Crack the crabs in half and place them in a freezer-safe plastic bag. If you’ve removed the crabs from the shell, wrap the meat in plastic wrap before placing it in a freezer bag. Raw crabs will last in the freezer for around six months; cooked crab will stay fresh in the freezer for up to three months.
After clipping the crab claws, use a small mallet to crack the shell of the crab. Once you remove the meat from the shell, you can break it into pieces with your hands. If you want to cook the crab in the shell, crack the shell slightly so the flavors of the curry will evenly season the crab meat during the cooking process.
Large crabs take between 15 and 20 minutes to cook. Smaller crabs can cook fully in about 10 minutes.
Crab turns black because a blood vessel in the crab can discolor the meat if the crab is not fully cooked. The discoloration happens once the crab is exposed to the air not being boiled for long enough.
