Crab Fried Rice Recipe

5/5 33 Votes

Pin It

See it on your phone!

Of all the fried rice dishes, Crab Fried Rice is the king of fried rice that gets to meet and greet important guests. When I was a kid, crab fried rice was the dish that came at the end of the 10-20 course wedding banquet.

Crab Fried Rice is a dish that you do not want to order from small street stalls. You want to get crab fried rice at a nice restaurant because the quality of the crab determines how good crab fried rice can be.

This recipe reflects how crab fried rice is made in Thai restaurants in Thailand, no carrots, no peas, just crab!

4 Servings, Prep Time: 20 Minutes, Total Time: 20 Minutes

6 cups cooked rice
2 eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
3 cloves chopped garlic
2-3 chopped green onions
3-5 tablespoons cooking oil
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 cup crab meat

Tips and Techniques

Drier rice gives you fluffy fried rice as opposed to gummy/mushy fried rice. Cook rice with about 10% less water than normal to get firmer rice.
Home stoves don't have as many BTUs as a restaurant stove and it's tough to get a high enough heat. To do so, make sure you start with an exceptionally hot wok, cook fast and be efficient.
If you are using cold rice, heat it up for a few minutes so that it's warm. Cold rice will take away much needed heat from your wok. It's harder to break up clumps of cold rice. You may end up with mushy and/or broken grains than you want.
Quick cooking time will keep crab meat intact for better presentation.
Taste your crab to see if the salt content is high. If the crab is salty, adjust the amount of fish sauce.
I recommend using ground white pepper instead of ground black pepper because it gives fried rice dishes a distinct clean taste.
Use the amounts of rice and crab as a guide. Add more crab or rice if you like.

Method

Prepping

I cook 3 cups of jasmine rice with 3 cups of water which yields about 7 cups of cooked rice. This recipe calls for 6 cups of cooked rice. Another cup is for emergency rescue. Canned crab meat is convenient and fast. However, if you have leftover cooked crab, that is ideal. The can that I bought has ½ cup of crab meat. You will need 2 cans. Squeeze out the water so that the fried rice will be fluffy not gummy.

Cooking

Over medium to high heat, add 3 tablespoons of oil to a wok or a large pot. You'll need room to stir the rice around. Add chopped garlic to the oil. When the garlic begins to brown, add rice. Stir and mix the rice with the oil. Add crab meat and stir again.

Make room in the middle of the wok. Add a teaspoon of oil and crack the egg into the spot. Scramble the egg to cook it. Then incorporate the egg into the rest of the fried rice. Repeat the same steps to add another egg.

Add fish sauce and ground white pepper and taste. If your fried rice is too salty, add the 1 cup of left over rice. Stir and taste again. If you are happy with the taste, turn off the heat. Add the chopped green onions. In the pictures, I added a few cilantro leaves as a garnish, but it's not necessary and purely for decoration.

Tasting

The Crab Fried Rice should be fluffy, dotted with crab chunks and green onion. It should not be oily. The crab flavor should be prominent with detectable amount of ground white pepper. Serve with sliced cucumber, a wedge of lime and chili fish sauce.

1 1

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 5

6 6

Chili Fish Sauce

Nam Pla Prig

2 tablespoons fish sauce
1/4 lime
1 shallots
1-4 Thai chili pepper

Tips and Techniques

For a vegetarian chili fish sauce, substitute light soy sauce for fish sauce.

Method

Slice chili pepper and shallot and place them in a sauce dish. Add fish sauce and lime juice. Some people omit the lime juice. But in our house, lime juice is a must. Some like garlic instead of shallot.

This sauce is like salt and pepper, appearing on most people's table. Chili fish sauce is also served with crispy fried dishes like fried fish, deep fried okra or green beans.