I love fried rice! Beef and chicken are good, but pork and shrimp fried rice are my favorites. But I always like to try new things, and I have found some new fried rice recipes over the years I’ve been blogging. There was vegan Kimchi Fried Rice which had a spicy kick to it and, of course, fermented cabbage. And I loved Nigerian Fried Rice with beef liver or shrimp (I’ve made it both ways). But today I’m back to Asian fried rice with this Thai Style Crab Fried Rice. Since I love shrimp fried rice this seemed like a natural for me, but adding crab surprised me for some reason. But I do love crab, and it’s not something I get to eat often, so I had to give this a try!
For something ultra-delicious in minutes, try this crab fried rice for a one-pan meal that is bursting with delicate seafood flavor!
The Ingredients
My pre-grocery shopping pantry check showed me I had several ingredients for my Thai Style Crab Fried Rice. I had fish sauce, sugar, eggs, limes, garlic, carrots, butter, vegetable oil, and butter. I also had some jasmine rice, which is a staple of Thai cuisine.
My shopping list for this recipe wasn’t too long, and I found everything I needed at my usual grocery store. They had several types of crab available, so I stopped to ask the fishmonger what would be best. He recommended their mid-priced swimming crab claw meat ($12 for 8 ounces).
Since this recipe had plenty of other strong flavors, he said the taste would be very close to the more expensive lump crab ($24 for 8 ounces) and jumbo lump crab ($31 for 8 ounces). They also had canned lump crab ($8 for 6 ounces) and imitation crab ($4-$6 per package). Or I suppose you could do it the hard way with crab legs LOL!
The Process
This recipe started the day before I planned to make it by cooking up some rice. This recipe (and all fried rice) needs dried-out day-old rice so it doesn’t turn to mush while it cooks.
Rice triples when cooked, so 1 cup of dry rice gave me the exact amount needed: 3 cups of cooked rice. Then I spread the rice onto a sheet pan and put it into the refrigerator uncovered.
This is a quick recipe, so things move fast once cooking starts, I made sure to have all the ingredients prepped before I began. It paid off! The cooking went very fast, especially at the start with the eggs.
The first time I made this Thai Style Crab Fried Rice recipe didn’t go as planned. I made some jasmine rice one night, intending to let it dry in the refrigerator so I could make the recipe the next day. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that.
Instead, I put the dried rice into a sealed container. I finally got to make the recipe after a couple more days. It went well at first, but my rice quickly turned mushy. My guess is the condensation in the sealed container rehydrated the dried rice.
The good news was the rice tasted great! But I wasn’t satisfied with mushy rice, and I had just enough ingredients to make it again. That night I made more jasmine rice and once again spread it on a sheet pan to dry overnight in the refrigerator.
The next day I made sure that rice got cooked! I gave this recipe one more time even after a tumultuous day, and I’m happy to say the texture was just right. There was no clumping or mushiness to it at all, and I ended up with a big ‘ole skillet full of lovely fried rice.
Timing
This recipe lists 10 minutes to prep and 5 minutes to cook, for a total time of 15 minutes. Mine was not that fast. Here’s how it went:
- 4 minutes to make the sauce
- 10 minutes to prep the rice
- 7 minutes to cook the rice
- 1 minute to garnish
- 22 minutes total
Adding the sauce, prepping the rice, and garnishing make the total prep time 15 minutes. I also cooked the rice for a couple extra minutes trying to get it nice and brown. Maybe some practice or using pre-diced carrots and onions would speed things up? But dinner in 22 minutes isn’t bad at all!