Tunxi Drunken Crab 屯溪醉蟹

How it is made

The recipe that Life Times (生活时报) printed with that feature starts with live crabs, scrubbed clean and drained; a dead crab must never be cured. The cook lifts each crab's belly flap, presses out the dirt beneath it, puts in 5 g of salt and one Sichuan peppercorn, and closes the flap. A claw tip is snapped off and pushed through the top of the flap to pin it shut. The crabs go into a jar, held down by two small bamboo strips wedged in a cross.

Soy sauce is poured in, 300 g in the ninth lunar month and 200 g once the weather turns cold. Huizhou sealed-jar rice wine (徽州封缸酒), bruised ginger, lightly crushed garlic and rock sugar follow, and sorghum liquor goes in last. The jar mouth is bound tightly with oiled paper, and the crabs are ready to eat after one week.

Ingredients

The printed quantities are four live crabs, 300 g soy sauce, 200 g Huizhou sealed-jar rice wine, 15 g ginger, 20 g fine salt, four garlic cloves, 25 g rock sugar, 20 g sorghum liquor and four Sichuan peppercorns.

Flavour and texture

When the jar is opened, the shells have turned a grey-green, the meat is tender, and the wine aroma is strong. The taste is salty and savoury with a slight sweetness.

Where it comes from

Because the jar is sealed tightly, an unopened jar keeps for two to three months, and in Tunxi a jar of Tunxi Drunken Crab is given to relatives and friends as a present. Preserved crab has a long history in China: the same article says sugar-cured crab was eaten as early as the Northern and Southern dynasties, and by the Sui and Tang, crab preserved in wine lees, honey-cured crab and drunken crab were tribute foods.

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