Locals often eat porridge with it, and a crab leg can eat a big bowl. This meaning is similar to tofu milk, which relies on weak food to dilute the salty taste and highlight the sweetness of amino acids.
From the point of view of food safety, this may be a good way to eliminate parasites. However, the lightness and beauty of crab meat are also greatly reduced under the impact of salty taste.
Salt can quickly solidify the gelatinous raw crab meat, so pickled crabs are different from drunken crabs. The first requirement is not taste, but speed. Once the curing time is too long and too much salt is used, crab meat will become old-fashioned and inedible.
What should a good pickled crab look like? Only "raw pickled", that is, crabs pickled for less than a day, can guarantee the elegance and beauty of a young person.
Yuan Tengfei said that the Song Dynasty was the most "wonderful" era of classical China, which had most of the social characteristics of today's "developed countries": the political separation of monarchies was gradually limited, wealth was concentrated in the middle class, culture was unprecedentedly prosperous, and even the realm of pickled crabs reached a considerable height.
There are many recipes for pickled crabs left by Song people, as high as those recorded in Sun's "A Brief Introduction to Crabs": one is to marinate crabs with wine or wine for a long time, which is called "splashing crabs with wine"; The other is to mix the ingredients and eat them immediately. In order to describe that there is only time to wash hands from pickling to entrance, it is called "hand washing crab".
There is a similar description in Tokyo Dream. On the streets of Kaifeng, an "orange vinegar hand-washing crab" made of orange mud and vinegar is popular.
Every time I read this, I can't help swallowing a few mouthfuls of water. Compared with the contemporary dark cuisine "crab stuffed orange", the level is not high.
Unfortunately, the delicious pickled crab, which was widely circulated in the Song Dynasty, has been hard to find in the north since the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Whether it is related to water pollution and the unreliability of eating raw shrimps and crabs is unknown. But if you keep going south, you can still find traces of raw pickled crabs.
One of the popular "crab raw" in southern Zhejiang is to clean and chop the swimming crab caught in Oujiang River, seal it with vinegar, soy sauce and yellow wine for several hours and serve it on the table. This crab combines the advantages of drunken crab and pickled crab, and has an elegant flavor of yellow wine. But after all, the curing time is a little long, and it is no longer the wind of "washing hands and washing crabs" in the Song Dynasty.
Fujian raw pickled crabs, another good field. I once ate a swimming crab soaked in salt, garlic and white wine in Meizhou Island, Putian. The local liquor is vigorous, avoiding future troubles, and only needs to wait for dozens of minutes from production to entrance. Take a bite of crab legs and sip soju. The vastness of the sea makes people sad.
The person who can make pickled crabs best is from Chaoshan, Guangdong. The raw pickled crab in Shantou is green cream crab with thick cream. Keep it in clear water for half a day, let the crabs spit out the dirty things in their stomachs, and then clean their legs with a brush. Then put the washed crabs in the refrigerator for several hours to freeze to death. This is a cruel way to die, but the advantage is that it can kill parasites, make crab paste more compact, fresh and sweet, and have the chewiness of lean meat in the mouth.
After freezing, it will be easy. Take it out and cut it with a machete. Every crab should be connected with crab legs, including crab paste, crab meat and fist (joint meat). This is a test of the chef's skill and judgment. If you cut it well, you can put a beautiful flower-shaped plate on it.
Finally, the chopped crab pieces are immersed in the marinade prepared with seasonings such as soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, garlic, onion, pepper, pepper, ginger, sugar, dried tangerine peel and coriander. When the crab pieces melt and become soft, they can be eaten.
Gourmets who have tasted Chaoshan raw pickled crab regard it as a delicious legend on the table. Once opened, the crab meat is crystal clear, and the red semi-solidified paste makes people's index fingers move. It doesn't stick to the shell and has no fishy smell. When you pout and suck gently, the crab meat will slide out of the crab shell and into the mouth.
If it's hot and humid early summer with such cold raw pickled crabs in my mouth, I'm full of anxiety and fear. Although there are raw fish, shrimp and oysters in Chaoshan cuisine, this kind of raw pickled crab is undoubtedly the king of raw seafood.
Another tidbit worth mentioning is that the coriander in Chaoshan raw pickled crab is particularly delicious. The fragrant coriander, without heating, absorbs the sweet taste of crabs and sauces. Except Toona sinensis in bean curd brain and red onion fried by pigs, it is probably unparalleled in the vegetable industry.
Wang Zengqi said that he didn't like coriander. After losing a bet with others, he bite the bullet and began to like it. I don't think he has eaten the coriander in the raw pickled crab in Chaoshan, otherwise it is not too much to bite the bullet and grab it.