Sweet & Spicy Sambal Singaporean Chili Crab | Recipe Drop | Food52

Check out Food52’s new series Recipe Drop, where one of our Test Kitchen experts walks us through a brand-new recipe they developed just for Food52. Tune in for exclusive original recipes, from buttery pastries to showstopping roasts. Today, César is joined by Holly Ong, founder of Singaporean food startup based in Portland, Oregon.

Check out Sibeiho’s Sambal chili sauces – Boomz Sambal, OMG! Sambal® and AF Chili Chunka Sambal: https://sibeiho.com/
Follow Sibeiho: https://www.instagram.com/sibeihosibeiho/

ABOUT Singaporean Chili Crab:
“This dish is a balance of sweet, sour, and spicy flavors plus the umami taste of the sea from fresh crabs. At Sibeiho, we only cook with live crabs. But we understand that not all of us have access to amazing Pacific Northwest live crabs at our local market. So, the next best thing is cooked crabs from the market. It won’t have as much umami, but it will still be yum.

A few of my hacks:

-Use one jar of OMG! Sambal to one Dungeness crab.

-Use canned, organic tomato sauce if you don’t want to make it from scratch.

-You’ll need about 4 eggs per crab. Beat the eggs in a bowl and set aside. Sometimes I add more because the eggs are smaller or the crabs release more liquid when they cook.” – Holly Ong

GET THE RECIPE:
Singaporean Chili Crab: https://food52.com/recipes/90176-singapore-chili-crab

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first it starts off sweet and then you feel your tongue like slowly like this looks so good so good is it for real good yeah hey it’s Caesar with the food 52 Test Kitchen this is recipe drop and today I’m with my friend Holly Holly what are we making we’re making Singapore chili crab using the sbal that we made in Portland Oregon yummy let’s cook it so do we start with uh least favorite part well no it’s not least they’re going to crack heaven so it’s a good place for them because we are going to enjoy that when we buy crabs we want to make sure they’re really wriggling and then make sure that this is nice and hard so when you can try to ask the uncle when you’re buying it can you just feel the legs so make sure that it’s not Hollow and empty got CU Hollow and empty means there’s not a lot of meat on it so it’s not very nice yeah and I like to um cook my crabs by steaming them 7 Minute Timer what do you say like 2 3 Ines of water in there yeah just a little bit so I actually save that water as well because a lot of time the the umam will go there an instant stock right because that you need a little bit more liquid when you’re cooking this and it gets a bit dry sometimes you want it a little bit more runny you can use that but we’re going to have um I call it crab water when we break apart the crabs there’ll be water coming out we don’t throw that water away the gold yes it’s all Umami instant Umami in there so we can run through the ingredients we need ingredient list is very short it’s not very hard the most important thing is sbal cuz Singapore chili crab is always about the sbal and the Tomato so it’s nice nice it’s spicy Umami it’s a bit of sweet it’s great to eat with bread we also like to have it with um crispy fried monos which a Chinese bread um but baguett is also a nice way to do it it’s something that we do cuz you know Singapore is a colony so we have bread we have Chinese bread we Indian bread with lot of influences different we have people who eat it with Crispy noodles as well so that’s possible that sounds good too cuz essentially think of it as a Umami fight um like spaghetti sauce that way souped up and it’s got eggs in it so it’s really nice to eat yeah so that’s what we’re making so essentially what we need is very good sbal which I make so I know it’s good wait wait wait this is your sbal yeah this Singaporean sty is my mom’s recipe we make it in Portland Oregon don’t let the Italians know this but I like to stirb it into Pomodoro aesa listen I love pissing off the Italians unapologetically love you guys but um but it’s a lot of flavor in it instant marinade yeah so it takes that’s sweet too yeah I don’t expect that so that’s flavor it’s getting me there it is this one I think a lot of times it’s um the caramelization when we’re cooking we don’t have time to let the natural car caramelization of onion sugars work right because it takes hours to make this right but once you have it you can cook very quickly it’s like the short cut to umam and this is vegetarian vegan actually so a lot of the vegan customers or my friends they like to cook with it so it’s like a base I would have thought there was probably like some fermented fish in that oh we have another one that has fermented fish and that the one that we will the red one that we eat with coconut rice back home we can do a taste of it later I love coconut so we have you can choose to skin or you can choose to not skin when we do this one we always wash it cuz a lot of dirt on it this is for the sauce so the start of it is always flavoring it a little bit Singapore is Multicultural so we always like to mix a little bit so this this apparently was created by with in Roland out in East Coast there a little restaurant that’s why I grew up where there’s a lot of seafood restaurants these are aromatics that we would use like the traditional Chinese we always like to use ginger when we cook seafood it’s optional we don’t have to do it and you just kind of lightly slice it up as well I like to fry this so till it’s a little bit Brown the edges for the oil to infuse before we add on the other stuff I feel like ginger garlic and like green onion is like the Asian like Mara like holy trinity Holy Trinity so my ratio essentially when cooking crabs is one crab one bottle of sbal because it adds all that flavor but if you don’t like it too spicy can just do half um I do it let’s check on the crabs as well we’re at 1 minute 15 seconds yeah it’s it’s um nice and red now and you said just cold water yeah just cold water I mean we can do ice but it’s fine we’re going to cook it so fast so at this point at the that 7 Minute Mark they’re not fully cooked they’re not fully cooked it’s pretty much to make sure they don’t um wle around when you’re trying to break them apart but it also helps with the cooking process cuz it kind of makes the yeah it’s just easier to clean and everything so that’s what we have left we’re going to keep that so yeah so don’t throw it out yeah so the wrigly parts in there you don’t want that that’s some guts in Singapore we get mud crap so they get very dirty because it’s a lot of mud so usually we’re cleaning a lot so this is okay you just have to clean it a little bit and it’s good so usually I like to take the the legs off first cuz that’s the easiest part when you twist it you don’t want to pull so you turn it when you twist it so that the meat doesn’t that you don’t yanking out all the meat okay yeah so you’re turning it right and then you can see that’s dribbling you don’t want to throw that out we want all of that and then when you get this same thing you crack it in half cuz the other thing we want is for this to um get coated with the the sauce so that you can lick them and then if I have like if sometimes I have crackers I will crack this yeah yeah so that’s all you need to do you break it you can see it’s not fully cooked it’s a bit translucent yeah yeah so we want that to be opaque when we’re cooking it to clean this so usually this is all the parts you don’t want to eat anyway so you’re you’re putting your thumb in there and then you’re pulling it and you’re separating the head from the body essentially and you do a wle because that part we love to eat it which part this part here that’s right under the gills it’s full of cholesterol but it’s really good so we call it crab butter crab butter yeah yeah and this is kind of the mouth so it’s not very pretty some restaurants clean it off some people don’t but I kind of like to cut it away cuz it’s not very appetizing in general okay and then with this one all these gills gills are bad yeah they’re no good so we cut them all off then we cut it lit literally in half okay then that’s the funny part this white stuff we don’t want it yeah cuz that’s like weird stuff do you want this darker stuff the black stuff yeah we want the black stuff because that’s part of this thing too so in a normal if this was female that is all row I see yeah but they don’t sell female dungeon for sustainability purposes got it and then see still transparent right translucent it’s going to go be opaque and there’s a lot of meat in the body yeah so this is a this is a good crap okay so we kind of done one so essentially when they when we think about the crab that we just broke Cup right we have the body which is four of it there’s four pieces there then we have the head right and then we have the licks you don’t actually get a lot of the meat but it’s all that it’s more about the flavor that goes into the sauce really that’s what I feel about crap too it’s like it’s the overall flavor I feel like whatever little bits of meat you do get like that’s bonus so we are ready to fire crab Y what do you want this on high heat high heat it has usually I cook on like the highest possible possible setting especially with this cuz you want the Heat and the the speed of it when you’re cooking as well so definitely preheat your pan for a um I do the cold walk method where it’s not so scary especially at home so you do you can put in your aromatics and then you do actually I do garlic last but then we can do the Ginger cuz it’s a easier way to cook without got it all right is that the oil that’s olive oil I mean it’s okay so good amount of oil that’s maybe like 5 tbspoon you can put less if you’re using a non-stick but this one I want to have a little bit more yeah yeah okay we just let it cook let it do its thing yeah okay so you see that’s kind of like getting a bit brown right do you want to kind of cut this up into like wedges oh this knife is sharp yeah the knife is nice and sharp okay this is when the miracle oh magic what to happen ooh I pretty much use up the whole thing that smells so good yeah so I put in a bit of this that’s is shaing shaing a little bit you don’t need a lot and what does xaing do kind of De glazes but has sugar in it so it also helps add a little bit more flavor little sweetness Y and then for this one we’re going to do the whole can so why do you use fresh tomato and canned tomato um because fresh tomatoes have a little bit more body so that that’s also a nice contrast yeah so when that this one I use it for the sa like to add EXT to make the sauce essentially then because I like to eat tomatoes and then so that there’s still some chunks that’s harder like more firm just a contrasting textur else everything becomes mush mush and let’s do crap let’s do the one get fit too okay so covered and then and leave it on high it goes about maybe like 2 3 minutes but depends on the heat right cuz a lot of times with this one we’re cooking very high heat I will use this one the bigger one um but on this one like maybe I sing myself a happy birthday song and I check that happy birthday to me happy birthday to me happy birthday to me you could do one Mississippi two two Mississippi yeah so so these are last final yeah so it’s like I like a little bit of white pepper and the sugar I have on standby sometimes you just need that little bit and then we do white vinegar like you can do I’ve done apple cider it works too it’s just so you want a little bit more acidity in in that that you have cuz it can get spicy so you see that it went from translucent now it’s opaque and that’s pretty much and this is the main gauge we want which is the body you can’t tell the legs cuz it’s all encased up but with this one you can see that it’s cooked right so we’re pretty much good to roll nice so that’s super fast yeah because it’s a Seafood that’s why I’m like okay can you cook this with cooked crabs because generally in the supermarkets here it’s always the cooked crabs you can you just won’t get a lot of the you miss out on so much of the juices and the flavor and the fun and the fun let’s taste first before we put in the egg spicy got me right there oh yeah yeah right so I will put a bit of sugar just tone down and I like to use like you can use dark you can use light and brown sugar yeah Brown just attach of the white pepper for that flavor and a little bit more of this so this one is uh rice V rice vinegar so I want it a little bit more acidic so it’s a cuz this is a very rich sauce you don’t want to um have it too sweet so we add in a little bit of that okay so when doing that you just like making the egg drop and then resist the to stir we want it to kind of set without um setting so when would you eat this is this like a lunch is this like um dinner time usually we have crabs back home um growing up this is always a special occasion meal when visitors come and visit we go eat Singapore chili crab yeah so you can see now it’s kind of there that’s St to say yeah good okay now we can play what were the fancy well you picked you picked this one out okay let’s do that really took no time at all no that’s why I like you can cook this really quickly and we’ll be done I have a flight to catch you got you got places to be we going back to Portland and you’re going to go over the head too okay yeah yum yum this is so like impressive it’s not hard to make right it’s not yeah but a lot of it is really getting the right um ingredients and then once you have it like actually New York has a lot of fresh seafood too you just need to know where to go get yeah I mean New York we we have everything here it’s just people people get intimidated just just it’s scary it’s scary I would admit that and then you can use cilantro but I found Chinese parley which is not always available so it’s a nice one to add cuz it adds nice flavor wait I don’t know if I’ve ever had I thought this was cilantro no it’s Chinese parsley so we use this we make omelet with this one it’s nice it’s called a celery kind of taste so talk to me about these what’s up what’s up yeah so usually back home we like to eat them with deep fried monos right which is kind of what these things are and usually I buy just make sure you buy the ones without filling in it so this one is um a plain one and this one I’m very excited cuz I haven’t seen it here before but it’s coconuts version so hopefully I’m excited coconut version you guys don’t like myut outside it’s crunchy soft and you dip it in the soft it’s really and we have some sliced baguette just warming up in the oven right yeah so we it used to be you can eat it with baguettes but these stast is fashionable to have it with the mtos that you having here and bagette thing is like you know Singapore’s ex Colony so we kind of have a fusion of the de colonize yourselves I like using cast iron to deep fry cuz you don’t need a lot of space so smaller and you don’t have to use so much oil yeah and it’s got the high sights and rains the heat really well safer yeah hey Siri set the timer for 5 minutes minutes cting down oh you got a British man M mine is a black woman yeah 5 minutes High sorry I don’t understand she said two ways we’re going to try with eating it one of is um back home we like to use the crispy fried Monto they call it the golden pillows actually when it comes the rest the menu I’m all for the golden pillows but I also like to eat it with B is a nice way to eat it as well this looks so good so good is it for real good yeah it’s all that crunchy here uhuh yeah you do that that pillow Cheers Cheers just a little dipped int dipit and the sauce is soy and goes nice and soaked up yeah I like it with a little bit of egg and stuff and so good I’m glad you liked it that’s really good let’s try with the bag at it’s a nice one to eat I mean when you’re on the beach or something and you’re cooking it you don’t need a lot of stuff right you have crab you have egg the S and tomato sauce I think I got a little crab in me too Holly I had so much fun cooking with you thank you for coming in and cooking with me I think this is probably the most fun I’ve had shooting this so far um where can people find more of you um thank you so much for having me it was so much fun being in the food 52 kitchen cooking with you Chef um so C ho you can find it Us online we’re also available in New York in marce um cheese um there’s three sunbal you don’t have to I don’t encourage you to buy all three at the same time but it helps give you a nice profile idea of what all three of them taste likewe I loved it uh you can find the recipe down below uh like comment subscribe see you later see you later see you later