There’s a story behind this imitated crab (sai pang xie) recipe, and it starts with the Empress Dowager Cixi craving crabs. Unfortunately, being based in Beijing means a lack of fresh crabs, so the imperial chefs found a clever way to cook eggs to make them taste as good as crab meat. I love this recipe because you can make a huge quantity of the “crab” without breaking the bank – and the bonus is that there’s no need to get fiddly with crab shells!

There are many variations of the recipe, starting with the poor-man’s version with just eggs. Others use white fish and a touch of prawns to achieve a texture closest to crab meat. I’ve used only prawns here, as I prefer that more seafood-y taste.

I’ve also used a salted egg, as this adds a little extra punch to the recipe, but you can use normal eggs. If you’re using normal eggs, then make sure you add more salt in the egg white and egg yolk mixes.

Lastly, this version separates the egg white and egg yolk to create two parts with different textures. The egg white is the crab meat, and the egg yolk is the crab yolk. The most basic form of this recipe doesn’t bother with separating the two, but I really think that this step makes a huge difference to how good it tastes, so it’s not worth skimping on that.

The version below serves 2, and takes roughly 30 minutes to cook. Most of it is time spent chopping the prawns though!

Ingredients
4 eggs (optional: 1 of the eggs can be a salted egg)
2 thick slices of ginger (roughly 3mm and 5mm thick each)
90g of prawns (alternatively, use 70g of white fish and 5-6 prawns)
2 tbsps of Chinese rice vinegar (you need the dark coloured vinegar)
Optional: 1 tbsp of Chinese shaoxing cooking wine

You’ll also need salt to sprinkle into the egg mixes and olive oil for the pan.

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