How to make homemade unbeatable freshwater crab noodle soup

Main Ingredients Preparation

When buying field crabs, you can ask the seller to pre-process them or you can do it yourself at home. The field crab, once pre-processed, will consist of crab roe and finely ground crab meat.

Put the crab meat into a large bowl and strain to extract the crab meat juice. Pour in water, three times the amount of ground crab. Use your hands to squeeze the crab meat to separate it from the crab bones. Then, stir it well and tilt the bowl. The lighter crab meat will float on top, while the heavier crab bones will settle at the bottom. Strain to get the crab meat juice and pour it into a pot. Stop straining when you see the crab bones.

Continue to add cold water to the bowl to strain more. Squeeze and stir well before straining the crab meat juice again. When you see that the crab juice color is fading, it means that you have almost fully extracted the crab meat. Discard the crab bone pulp.

With the amount of crab ingredients in this post, Cookbeo will get more than 8 liters of crab juice. This is enough to make crab hotpot and even to cook a crab noodle soup.

After straining the crabs, you pre-process the tomatoes. Wash the tomatoes thoroughly, and cut them into big wedges.

Peel the dry onions and slice them thinly.

Cut the green onions into 2-3cm long segments.

Preparation of accompanying ingredients for Crab Soup Hotpot

Pick and wash the vegetables and mushrooms that accompany the crab hotpot in salt water. With spinach and water spinach, take the young shoots, peel the zucchini and luffa, and cut them into 2cm thick oblique slices. Cut the mushroom stalks, soak and wash them, then tear them into small pieces or slice them small. Soak banana flower in salt water and drain.

Cut fragrant herbs like perilla and Vietnamese balm roughly.

Cut tofu into small pieces and fry until golden.

Bean curd skin should be puff fried to increase its rich aroma.

Fried onions and fried fat can be bought outside or made at home.

Cut beef shank, young cartilage ribs, crunchy bacon... into thin slices. Store in the fridge and take out when nearly ready to eat.

Cooking Crab Soup Broth

After straining the crab juice, add a bit of seasoning powder and monosodium glutamate. Stir in one direction to let the crab meat curl together.

Turn on the stove at a medium heat level. Occasionally use chopsticks to gently stir the bottom of the pot to avoid the crab meat sticking to the bottom.

When the water gets hot and almost boils, the crab meat will gradually separate and float on the water surface. At this point, continue to use chopsticks to gently stir the crab meat to float and clump together forming cakes.

When the water is nearly boiling, reduce the heat. Because if you keep the heat high, the crab soup is prone to overflow and it will cause the crab meat cake to break and fail to form.

When the water boils, reduce to the lowest heat level, cover the pot, and cook for another 2-3 minutes for the crab meat cakes to fully cook and stick together.

Then turn off the stove, scoop out the crab cakes into a separate bowl.

Sauteing Tomatoes

Next, add 2 tablespoons of chicken fat to a pan, when the oil is hot, fry half of the sliced onions until fragrant. Then add the tomatoes. Saute quickly on high heat, when the tomatoes have fully absorbed the oil, add the green onions. Stir evenly, saute for an additional 20 seconds, turn off the stove, and add this tomato mixture to the crab soup pot you just cooked.

Steaming Crab Roe

Fry the remaining onions until fragrant with 2 tablespoons of chicken fat + 2-3 tablespoons of annatto oil (which helps the crab roe to have a deeper color).

When the onions turn golden and fragrant, reduce the heat to the lowest level and pour in the crab roe, stir evenly. When steaming crab roe, keep the heat low as the crab roe is small and can easily burn.

When the crab roe boils, turn off the stove. Scoop half of the steamed crab roe into the crab soup pot. The purpose is to create color, flavor, and also the color for the crab soup broth.

For the remaining half of the steamed crab roe, turn the stove back on at low heat, then add more fish sauce to taste. If you can eat spicy food, add a bit of satay. And also add some fried onions. Steam this mixture until it boils, then turn off the stove, scoop it into a separate bowl. This steamed crab roe will be used as a dip for the crab hotpot, especially if you dip vermicelli or clam noodles with this crab roe sauce, it will taste very rich and delicious.

In addition to steamed crab roe, prepare some dipping sauce for the crab hotpot by adding a bit of pepper, lemon, and chili seasoning.

Making Crab Soup Hotpot

After steaming the crab roe and preparing the dipping sauce... now, put the crab soup pot on the stove. Turn on the stove at a high-medium heat level, stir well. When the soup boils, adjust the taste with seasoning including seasoning powder, a bit of monosodium glutamate, fish sauce, and most importantly, rice vinegar.

When seasoning the hotpot soup, don't make it too strong, because the more you dip into the hotpot, the stronger the soup gets. However, the main flavor of the crab soup hotpot is still the mild sour taste of rice vinegar and tomatoes.

After seasoning, turn off the stove, transfer the soup to a specialized hotpot. Arrange the meat, vegetables, mushrooms... that go with it.

The crab soup hotpot is delicious and visually appealing, very enticing. Crab hotpot has a sweet taste from field crabs, mild sourness from rice vinegar, rich aroma from accompanying ingredients such as beef shank, young cartilage ribs, vegetables, mushrooms, fried onions... Especially, the crab roe prepared in the way that Cookbeo shared in this post is an attractive flavor highlight.

Wish you cook this hotpot deliciously!