Tag: crab

Spicy Raw Crab, Yangnyeom Gejang
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Many Koreans call yangnyeom gejang a ‘meal thief’ (밥도둑; bap do duk), a dish so delicious that the accompanying bowl of rice is gone in no time. Admittedly, it is quite messy to eat – I wouldn’t recommend this for a first date – as you’ll soon have the red sauce covering your lips and fingers. Yet, you won’t be able to stop reaching for another crab piece and licking off any remaining sauce from your fingers.
The original version is the simple ‘gejang’ or ‘ganjang gejang,’ literally crab (게; ge) in soy sauce (간장; gan jang). Cleaned fresh crabs are immersed in boiled then cooled soy sauce for 3-5 days, with the same soy sauce strained, boiled, cooled and poured back a couple of times to deeply flavor the crabs along the way.  Although it sounds all too salty, when it’s done right, these ganjang gejang (간장 게장) crabs come out with deep oceany, briny bites.
I usually resort to a faster, spicier version, which is utterly delicious and addictive – seasoned (양념; yang nyeom) or spicy (매운; mae un) gejang. Besides, it’s easy to make this dish – only two steps! Clean the crabs. Mix in spicy sauce.
…although these are really the two big steps, it takes quite a lot of effort, from shopping for fresh, live blue crabs to cleaning the crabs in one-go.  For me, it’s still worthwhile, even with the time requirement and my mild allergic reaction to shellfish. Yes, I like this a lot.
It is also a great time to have blue crabs now, in season for the female roes (vs. for plump crab meat in autumn). As a person who grew up in a fish roe-loving country, spring is a better season for blue crabs.
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This dish is made only with the freshest crabs. When I make yangnyeom gejang, I get the liveliest crabs in Chinatown in the morning, then freeze them for an hour or so for easier handling when I get home.
KOREAN WORDS)
ge      게    crab
gae    개    dog
May 4, 2011
The Korean King Crab Experience
I pass by these restaurants with the giant crabs on them all the time in Korea, and I’ve seen them in Japan. I haven’t gone to one yet because they are prohibitively expensive. I’ve had what Koreans call dae ge 대게, or big crab. That was from a street vendor (one of the earliest Food Journal entries) and wasn’t that good in hindsight. Eun Jeong just said, “Let’s eat king crab,” last Sunday. I think she saw them on a program, and she couldn’t get them out of her mind.
The one she had originally wanted to go to had closed and re-opened as a SeollongTang joint. I knew of another one that I pass by every day on my commute. This was one of the larger restaurants and had the largest king crab tanks I’ve seen in Korea thus far.
Before we sat down, they led us outside to choose our crab. The crab man took one out and weighed it.
Around 2 kilograms. That came out to–get ready for it–76,000 won.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU_kwvA8B7s]
“I’m an expensive little mo fo–you’d better leave me alone. Hey, where are you taking me?”
I didn’t get to see the rest.
They led us back inside to a private room. They laid out the banchan and advised us not to eat much. The crab was going to be a lot. We were both hungry and couldn’t resist, though. The banchan was all good. It better be for that price.
There was some Japchae,
an herb salad with an arugula-like herb I’ve been meaning to find the name of, water kimchi ë¬¼ ê¹€ì¹˜, a simple salad with (for once) a decent cream dressing, and
radish kimchi with fresh oysters.
Mmm… oysters…
The crab finally arrived. As you can see, they hacked it up into easy-to-handle parts. They even reserved the “good stuff” in the head shell–the crab butter.
If you’re squeamish about the crab butter then you’re a wuss and don’t know what you’re missing. That’s the best part.
There are no awkward crab crackers at Korean crab restaurants. There’s a more practical solution–scissors. Why squeeze a shell and get juice in your eye with bits of cracked shell in your meat? You can easily and cleanly open the shell with scissors. There also was a convenient crab fork for pulling out the other parts. Eun Jeong went crazy for the crab meat immediately.
There was no drawn butter. I love that with crab and lobster. But they did have a good dipping sauce that was sweet and tart and oniony–very similar to some Cajun hot sauces I liked back home. We both dispensed with the sauce. It was better by itself.
Besides, the best sauce was in the head shell itself.
We ate a good bit of it. The side dishes worked well with the crab. Being a deep sea denizen, it’s full of white creamy fat and gets rich on the throat quickly. The astringent Korean side dishes helped balance it. We asked the staff to wrap it up for us but not before they did this.
They took the head shell and the yummy stuff inside and made a fried rice topped with flying fish roe. Accompanied by a good kimchi, it was amazing.
We finished all the rice, and they packed up the rest of the shells. The next evening, I was able to finish them off–this time with butter.
Here is some more Korean king crab footage I found on YouTube.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQq_00vtAXE]
Cutting up a King Crab (teachingenglishseoul)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i38wC5TlL8]
King Crab Night! (alexfung23)
December 11, 2007
Marinated Crab Lunch
Here we go again with the marinated crab.
This was a restaurant that specialized in SundaeGuk 순대국, and I was going to order it. Then I saw on a handwritten sign “Marinated Crab Lunch” (Kei-jang Jeong Shik 게장 한정식).
Had to try that. I know my mom would die over it.
We started off with the side dishes and a bowl with nothing in it but some dried seaweed, chopped green onions, sesame seeds, and a raw egg yolk.
Then the crab came out. Soy Sauce Marinated Crab this time with a special device for picking out the meat.
I was also given some rice to put in the big bowl to be mixed with the egg yolk and whatever crab meat I could dig out.
Freakin’ amazing! You’ve never tasted anything like this. Salty, strong sea taste with the seaweed, and very strong umami flavor with the crab meat and egg yolk.
October 11, 2007
Smothered Raw Crabs (GeiJang 게장)
These are one of my first loves in Korean food. Whenever we went out for galbi, I pushed for the restaurants with the best GeiJang 게장, raw split crabs smothered in a gochujang mixture.
Eun Jeong tries to make it look dignified, but, like eating ribs in the South, there’s no dainty graceful way to eat these. For me, I use a combination of chopsticks and fingers to transport the little crabbies to my mouth, where I proceed to suck and suck hard–like a new Rocco DiSpirito reality show.
Like many shellfish, this is a sensual food. You can’t avoid the sexual metaphors on this one.
Oh, and here’s some more galbi food porn.

March 30, 2007