Friday fry-day: Crab rangoon (or crab puffs)

Vietnamese version (bản tiếng Việt): click here!

Frying time is back! My man loves crab rangoon so much that he always ordered it as appetizer every time we got to an Asian restaurant. But the crab rangoons, or crab puffs we ordered did not have much or good filling, so I told him that I would make a “cheaper but better” crab puffs batch for him. “Cheaper but better”? Does that ring any bell? That’s right, it’s Joshua Weissman’s style. I like his sense of humor and his recipes are instructive. I once tried Tuna poke bowl following his recipe, with a little modification and it came out so good. This time, I’m gonna try the crab rangoon following his original recipe (video | post), and yes, with some adjustments to fit my budget: instead of fancy king crab, I use canned crab meat, and I didn’t make the chili sauce because I found that the Mal Ploy sweet chili sauce and Cholimex chili sauce were already good for the dish. I also got myself a deep fryer pot so the work would be much easier.

Ingredients: (for 3-4 servings)

• Canned crab meat: 5 oz (~150 grams) (Private Selection® claw crab meat from Frys – my local grocery store)
• Cream cheese: 5 oz
• Carrots: 3 baby carrots (~50 grams)
• Spring onion: 1 whole spring onion
• Garlic: 1 clove
• Shallot: 1/4 of whole shallot
• About 14 square wonton warps
• Cooking oil for deep-frying
• Sweet chili sauce when serving

Preparation:

• In a medium-sized bowl, add the cream cheese and let it soften to reach room temperature.
• While waiting for the cream cheese to get softened, finely chop the garlic, shallot, carrots and spring onion.
• Add the canned crab to the cream cheese bowl, then add the chopped shallot, garlic, carrots, spring onion and gently fold them together. By now the filling is ready.
• Place a wonton sheet on a flat surface. Use a dinner spoon and add 1 spoonful of filling to the center of the wonton sheet, brush the edge with cooking oil and shape the wonton by sticking the corners of the sheet together then pinching the edges together. Repeat until all finishing the filling and wonton wraps.

• Place the crab puffs in the freezer at least 30 minutes before frying (to make them harder and easy to handle). To fry, add the cooking oil to a deep fry pot at least 1.5 inches in depth and preheat to 350 F (~ 177 C). When the oil is hot, gently add the crab puffs to the pot and fry for 3 minutes. Take out the golden brown crab puffs and cool them on cooling rack then place them on paper towel to remove excess oil. It is best to serve them right away when they are still hot.

Total time: 1 hour and 15 minutes

Notes:

• My canned crab was lightly salty already so I didn’t add any more seasoning to it. If you like more seasoning in your filling, feel free to use the worcestershire sauce (like Joshua did) or fish sauce, soy sauce as alternative to the worcestershire sauce, if you don’t have one (like me).
• One spoonful of the filling using the dinner spoon is equivalent to a cookie scoop.
• I found that 1 : 1 weight ratio between crab and cream cheese were quite perfect as either of them dominated the other in taste. And adding some carrots to the filling was like… adding some colors to it. Just don’t use high water-content veggies.

That’s it for my Friday fry-day! Hope you enjoy the recipe (like my labmates, my boyfriend and his roommates)!

Ever wonder why I only use 5 oz of cream cheese (which usually comes in 8-oz package)?
Ever wonder why I only use 5 oz of canned crab (which is sold in an 8-oz jar)?

… Yep! They are for other recipes! I made Stir-fry crab vermicelli from the remaining 3 oz of crab and Mushroom puffs from the remaining 3 oz of cream cheese (a.k.a vegetarian version of the crab rangoon). Link included in the name!