Crawfish or also known as Crayfish or Crawdads are fresh water crustacean which looks like mini lobster to me.
Crawfish is not too common in Southeast Asia cuisine. I know it is quite widely spread in Mainland China however. The first time I had Crawfish was when I went to New Orleans back in 2000, wow…that was like 11 years ago..and oh..we also ordered a deep-fried alligator meat (tasted good actually). I honestly like to eat Crawfish better than Crabs (because I’m lazy to pick the meat out of Crabs and I get a bit impatience sometimes, well, except for King Crabs lol). It’s easier to work with Crawfish.
So, we got some fresh crawfish from the Asian store and I used the same recipe I used to cook chili crab last year.
CHILI CRAWFISH
Ingredients
- 2.5 lbs about 1 kg live crawfish
- 1 cup of water with 1 tsp of tamarind
- ½ tsp of turmeric powder
- Sugar and salt to taste
- Canola/Vegetable Oil for frying
- CHILI PASTE:
- 10 dry chilis soaked until softened
- 1 big onions
- 2 tsp shrimp paste belacan
- Blend all ingredients in the food processor until smooth
Instructions
- Submerge the live crawfish in a clean cold water and drain off. Repeat several times to wash the crawfish
- Heat some oil in the big wok and fry the crawfish until they are cooked and of course no longer moving. Set aside
- In the same oil, fry blended ingredients until fragrant and add tamarind juice. Season with salt and sugar to taste
- Add the crawfish back in and cook until the chili sauce is thickened
4 comments
wow this looks great. I love chili crab and crawfish. Combining them sounds like a great idea!!
It was delicious. I haven’t made it for a while. I think I need to now 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Gigi,
I’ve never cooked crawfish while I was in Singapore or Indonesia. A while back, I heard people found some frozen crawfish at IKEA Tampines at their mini-supermarket outside the check-out counters though. I’m not sure if you can still find them there, probably difficult to find fresh ones in Asia. Hmmm! Sorry, wish I can offer more suggestion on where to find in SG.
Where did you find crawfish in Asia? I live in Singapore and I haven’t be able to find those mudbugs anywhere?