Name: Poo Pad Pong Curry (Thai Stir-Fried Crab in Curry Powder and Egg)
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 3 servings
Cuisine: Thai
Ingredients: 2 pcs blue crabs; 2 tbsp cornstarch; 2 tbsp curry powder; 1 tbsp nam prik pao; 1 tbsp oyster sauce; 1.5 tbsp fish sauce; 1 tsp sugar; 0.5 tsp white pepper; 100 ml evaporated milk; 60 ml water; 3 pcs eggs; 2 tbsp evaporated milk; 4 tbsp neutral oil; 5 cloves garlic; 0.5 pc onion; 2 pcs red chillies; 60 g Chinese celery; 2 stalks spring onions

Ingredients

3servings

Crab
blue crabs · large; or one mud crab. Cleaned, cut into pieces, claws cracked with the back of a knife2 pcs
cornstarch · dusted on the cut faces only, so the meat does not leak out2 tbsp
Sauce
curry powder · the yellow Thai or Indian kind; it is both the name of the dish and its centre2 tbsp
nam prik pao · Thai roasted chilli paste, for colour and a sweet savouriness1 tbsp
oyster sauce1 tbsp
fish sauce1.5 tbsp
sugar1 tsp
white pepper0.5 tsp
evaporated milk · not coconut milk — this is a Sino-Thai restaurant dish100 ml
water · or chicken stock60 ml
Egg mixture
eggs · beaten only lightly; white and yolk need not be fully combined3 pcs
evaporated milk · in the egg, which makes it set softer2 tbsp
To stir-fry
neutral oil4 tbsp
garlic · roughly chopped5 cloves
onion · in large slices0.5 pc
red chillies · sliced on the diagonal2 pcs
Chinese celery · in 5cm lengths; ordinary celery stalk and leaf will do60 g
spring onions · in 5cm lengths, not finely sliced2 stalks

Steps

Clean the crab, cut it into 4-6 pieces and crack the claws with the back of a knife. Dust cornstarch on the cut faces only — it keeps the meat from leaking out as it fries.
⏲ 15 min
Mix every sauce ingredient together in a bowl first (curry powder, nam prik pao, oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar, white pepper, 100ml evaporated milk, water). Once the wok is hot there is no time to measure — the whole dish takes three minutes.
⏲ 5 min
Beat the 3 eggs with 2 tbsp evaporated milk only a few strokes with chopsticks. Beaten smooth they simply dissolve into the sauce; left rough, white and yolk stay as separate ribbons, and that is the texture you want.
⏲ 1 min
Heat the wok until it smokes, add 4 tbsp oil and fry the crab pieces over high heat for 3 minutes. Lift them out once the shells turn red.
⏲ 3 min
In the same wok, fry the garlic 30 seconds, then the onion and red chilli for a minute.
⏲ 2 min
Pour in all the sauce at once and let it bubble 30 seconds. Curry powder needs oil to open its aroma into, which is why it was never slaked in water first. The sauce begins to thicken as it boils.
⏲ 1 min
Return the crab and turn it in the sauce for a minute. Add the Chinese celery and spring onion.
⏲ 2 min
Lower the heat to medium and pour the egg over the surface of the sauce. Wait ten seconds, then fold two or three times, no more. Stirring the instant it lands dissolves the egg into a merely yellow sauce with no ribbons in it.
⏲ 1 min
Take it off the heat while the egg is only half set — still glossy, gathered in soft curds. Cooked through it becomes scrambled egg, and that is the usual way this dish fails. Residual heat in the wok finishes it.
⏲ 1 min
Turn out onto a plate and serve with plain rice. Half the dish is the sauce clinging to the shells, so eating it with your hands is correct.
⏲ 1 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Poo nim pad pong curry uses soft-shell crab, which means no shells to work through:

dust it in cornstarch, fry it first, then fold it into the sauce. Thai restaurants serve it as often as the whole-crab version.

Prawns or squid work too (kung pad pong curry). Prawns need 90 seconds and squid a

minute, so it finishes even faster than crab.

With picked crab meat only it becomes realistic for a weeknight. You lose what the

shells give the sauce, so fry a handful of prawn shells in the oil first to make some of it back.

Milk instead of evaporated milk makes the sauce thin, and coconut milk makes it a

different dish. The thickness and faintly caramelised sweetness of evaporated milk is this sauce's reference point.

Pad kra pao is the same kind of Thai stir-fry with an entirely

different axis — holy basil and fish sauce there, curry powder and egg here.

Tomato and egg stir-fry is another country's version of

using egg as the sauce, and the trick of leaving it half set transfers directly.

Tips

It is a stir-fry, not a curry. Pad in the name means to stir-fry. Unlike a gaeng

that simmers and reduces, the sauce here is finished in the wok in thirty seconds, so the whole of the preparation is mixing everything in advance and putting it within reach (heat control).

The egg is the sauce. The body of this dish comes from half-set egg, not starch or

coconut milk. Hence: beat it lightly, wait ten seconds after pouring, fold two or three times. All three exist to keep the ribbons (cooking eggs).

Kill the heat at half set. Residual wok heat finishes it. Think of it as coming

together on the plate and the timing works out. Cooked through, it is scrambled egg.

Use evaporated milk, not coconut. Poo pad pong curry came out of twentieth-century

Sino-Thai restaurants in Bangkok and has a different ancestry from the coconut curries of the south.

Curry powder goes into oil. Slaked in water or stock first it only half opens.

Pouring the mixed sauce into a hot oiled wok and letting it bubble for thirty seconds is what does that job (building umami).

Cut the vegetables large. The 5cm lengths of spring onion and celery are not for

looks: finely cut vegetables collapse and disappear inside a three-minute stir-fry.

No nam prik pao? A tablespoon of chilli oil and a teaspoon of sugar gets partway

there. The roasted, smoky savouriness is hard to fake, though, so a jar is worth buying.

With rice, and immediately. Anything with egg in it firms up and weeps as it cools.

This is not a dish to reheat (balancing flavour).

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

More of the same kind

Main course →

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