Spicy Crayfish
Cuisine: Chinese
Spicy Crayfish is a home-style seafood dish at difficulty 4/5 (Advanced), about 571 kcal. Ingredients and step-by-step instructions are below, with notes for home cooking.
4 / 5
★★★★☆
571 kcal
Ingredients
- Crayfish
- Oil
- Bay leaves
- Star anise
- Cassia bark
- Green Sichuan peppercorns
- Red Sichuan peppercorns
- Bullet chilies (zidantou)
- Scallion, ginger and garlic
- Pixian chili bean paste (doubanjiang)
- Soybean paste
- Beer
- Light soy sauce
- Salt
Steps
- Scrub the crayfish clean and remove the veins; cut the scallion into 2 cm pieces and mince the ginger and garlic.
- Heat the oil; when it's slightly warm, add the bay leaves, star anise, cassia, green and red Sichuan peppercorns and bullet chilies.
- Once the spices are fragrant, add the scallion, ginger and garlic.
- When the aromatics are fragrant, add the Pixian bean paste and soybean paste and stir-fry until the oil turns red.
- Add the crayfish and stir-fry until they change color.
- Pour in the beer; once it boils, add the light soy sauce and salt.
- Cook until the crayfish are fully done, then serve.
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Notes
This dish is numbing, spicy, savory and fragrant, with tender, juicy crayfish meat, a classic Sichuan-Hunan drinking snack that's clean and affordable when made at home. Crayfish are rich in quality protein and trace minerals, but the sauce is heavy in oil and salt, so enjoy it occasionally. Handling live crayfish and many spices is a bit challenging for beginners, though skipping the deveining makes it much easier. It takes about 45 minutes from prep to plate.
Estimated difficulty: ★★★★
Estimated calories: 571 kcal
Group: crayfish
Quantities:
The amounts below are for 2 jin (1 kg) of crayfish; scale proportionally.
- Crayfish = 2 jin (1 kg)
- Oil = 70 ml (3 times the usual stir-fry amount)
- Bay leaves = 2
- Star anise = 1
- Cassia bark = 3 g
- Green Sichuan peppercorns = 10 g
- Red Sichuan peppercorns = 10 g
- Bullet chilies = 5 g
- Scallion = 1 large Chinese leek
- Ginger = 30 g
- Garlic = 7 cloves
- Pixian bean paste = 30 g
- Soybean paste = 30 g
- Beer = 500 ml
- Light soy sauce = 30 ml
- Salt = 10 g
Restaurants usually deep-fry the crayfish first, but deep-frying at home wastes too much oil, so this recipe uses a bit more oil than a normal stir-fry to pan-fry them; in testing it tastes just as good.
Deveined crayfish meat has a slightly worse texture than meat with the vein left in, and deveining is a challenge for beginners, so if you don't mind the vein you can leave it.