My version of Krua Apsorn’s Nuea Pu Phat Phrik Lueang
(For another version with chicken instead of crabmeat, see my post on Serious Eats.)
Crabmeat and Yellow Chili Stir-Fry (เนื้ิอปูผัดพริกเหลือง ร้านครัวอัปษร)
Author: Leela, based on the original recipe by Krua Apsorn Restaurant, Bangkok
Recipe type: Main Course
Cuisine: Thai
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 2-3
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2-3 yellow chilies (see notes)
- 3-4 kaffir lime leaves, hand torn into pieces and lightly bruised
- ¼ pound plump and crisp yard-long beans or green beans, trimmed and cut crosswise into ¼-inch pieces
- 8 ounces jumbo lump crabmeat (don’t use claw meat or canned crabmeat)
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
- ½ tablespoon oyster sauce (Krua Apsorn does not use this; it’s my own addition)
- ¼ cup chicken stock
Instructions
- Snap off the chili stems and discard them. Slice the chilies crosswise into ½-inch pieces. Pound them in a mortar just to break them up into roughly ¼-inch pieces and cause them to release the essential oil. (If you don’t have a mortar, place the chili slices in a plastic zipper bag, wrap the bag with a kitchen towel, then go at it with a heavy object such as the handle of a large Chinese cleaver or a meat mallet.
- Set a 10-inch skillet or wok over medium-high heat. When the skillet is hot, add the oil.
- Immediately add to the skillet, the pounded yellow chilies, kaffir lime leaves, and yard-long beans; stir them all around.
- Add the remaining ingredients; stir. Once the crabmeat is heated through, remove the skillet from heat.
- Transfer the finished dish to a serving plate and serve immediately with rice.
Notes
Auntie Daeng uses one yellow chili per 100 gram of crabmeat at Krua Apsorn. But use your own heat tolerance as the guide. If you can’t find yellow chilies, use red jalapeño or Serrano peppers. Remove the veins and seeds before pounding them, if you want the dish to be fragrant of chilies without being too hot. Do not substitute with red or yellow bell peppers. They don’t work the same way as yellow or red chilies.
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This is one of my favorite restaurants in Bangkok — we ate there (Sanam Bin Nam branch) twice in one week this past November and ordered the crab and yellow chili stir fry both times. Everything there is delicious!
Oh my gosh! I love Krua Apsorn. Their yellow curry crab is to die for! Thank you for writing this article, it’s very well done.
This is a fabulous post–very interesting, especially to those of us who’ve never made it to Thailand. Great photos. I’m curious–lump crabmeat is quite expensive in the US, a real luxury item. Is that also the case in Thailand? Thanks. Ken
Thanks, Ken. Yes, jumbo lump crabmeat is expensive in Thailand. This dish is priced just a tad above the daily minimum wage of Bt300. Other dishes on Krua Apsorn’s menu aren’t nearly this expensive, though.
Way to go!!! What an amazing experience, thank you so much for sharing.
Dear Leela,
Can you please put together a list of restaurants (top 10 perhaps) and eatery places that we Americans should try while we visit Bangkok. I wish I knew about this place in advance. I feel bad that I only been to only one place listed here on your webpage.
Looks like I have make a second trip to catch up on what I missed.
Thank you, Alfredo
Alfredo, that is in the work.
This article was great because I felt like I was in your shoes, there, at Krua Apsorn, wondering what to do, how to act, what to ask, and what would happen. I felt your trepidation, and I felt your relief and joy at being accepted and treated with respect and being made to feel welcome.
I am going to make this recipe Wednesday or Thursday night. I can’t wait! I am not sure if I will be able to find a yellow or orange chili. May I use habanero pepper instead? I can find the proper color that way, and the heat is not a problem.
Does anyone know a good mail-order source for kaffir-lime leaves? I have not been able to find local stores carrying them in Rockville/Germantown, MD.
Thanks!
Kortez, thanks for the kind words.
Habanero is much, much hotter than yellow chilies, so approach with caution. If you can find red-colored peppers at your local supermarket (anything but bell pepper, though) that are lower on the Scoville scale, I’d use those.
For kaffir lime leaves, try templeofthai.com. Not sure if they have them all the time or just if it’s just a seasonal thing. But that’s where I’d check first.
Thanks! Templeofthai.com has kaffir lime leaves in stock, and I am ordering tonight.
I really appreciate everything you do. It’s wonderful!
FYI, kaffir lime leaves freeze beautifully. You can order a bunch, wrap them up in a piece of paper towel, and put them in a freezer bag to use for the next 3-4 months. They thaw quickly too.
Thanks. I ordered a pound! I’ll make sure to store them in a few bags, wrapped up with enough paper towels to keep them preserved.
Thai food is my favorite cuisine, and your blog has become my favorite web site very quickly!
If you aren’t afraid of having a green thumb…. in the US you can get a dwarf kaffir lime bush/tree which is grafted. When I was in Canada I was looking at ordering one, but the border between Canada/US provided a big problem with the required certification.
I love your investigative reporting. Your articles are so well written; I feel like I’m right along side of you on your adventures. The photos and recipes are wonderful…loved the grilled chicken and skewered pork. Thank you for taking the time to put together such an informative journal. More grease to your elbow…
Wonderful post, wonderful blog. We read She Simmers and learn something new about something old from a friendly human voice. You can get kaffir lime leaves from importfood.com. They are fine in the freezer.
as always, you write as if you’re just across the table from me, talking about food and telling stories.
good LIVE crab here costs way over the daily minimum wage. but one day…one day…for today to compensate i’ll make your soured pork ribs. again.
nice weighing scale. maximum capacity not 5, not 10 but all of 7 kgs!
keep on writing. please.
“I’ve noticed you since you walked in,” she said.
“I like you,” she declared.
What was that about? Past life connection? Auntie Daeng liked you enough to open up her kitchen, that was incredible!
Can you do the same magic with David at Nahm, he has a crab and snake gourd soup – แกงจืดบวบงู that is just heavenly. I know one of the ex-kitchen staff, but she refused to tell me the recipe.
Love your posts.
I love your food writing, and I love Thai food. But this is my favorite sentence in this post : “…I knew I’d spend the whole afternoon in the dark archives of the National Library nearby — the activity which, to me, is akin to frolicking in a field of daisies on a sunny day with an ice cream cone in one hand and a stick of cotton candy in the other.”
Hear, hear for the daisies!
-another library rat
One of a very few web treatments I’ve seen that looks like someone cooking the way traditional Thai cookbooks say one ought to. Very inspiring…
I’m having trouble parsing the phrase “sand smelt jungle curry”. Jungle curry is obviously แกงป่า. Smelt are small fishes. But what is “sand” in this dish?
“Sand” is a type of smelt. I could have also gone with northern whiting, silver sillago, or silver whiting.
Now I know where I am eating tomorrow night!
I ate this dish when I was in Bangkok 2 years ago. Thanks for sharing the recipe, I can’t wait to try cooking it.
A little late to this, but I really loved and appreciated this post! I visited Bangkok for the first time last month and visited Krua Apsorn, but most of its well-known dishes were not available (sold out?) by the time I got there in the afternoon. I guess I’ll just have to console myself by attempting the recipe you so courageously elicited from the chef. Even more than the valuable recipe, thanks so much for sharing the story behind how you approached her. It would’ve been fine just to talk about the restaurant, the chef, the recipe… but I’m so glad you also give us the process behind how you got there. I’m often too shy and/or simply don’t know how to dig deeper into a culture or story. This is a really helpful and inspiring account — thank you!
It may be me, but can someone tell me where the recipe is listed on the next page? Or send me the link, since I am not able to find the recipe, and would LOVE to try making this awesome looking dish.
If you would click on number 2 at the bottom of page 1, you’d be directed to the recipe. But here’s the link: http://shesimmers.com/2013/02/krua-apsorn-crabmeat-yellow-chili-stir-fry-เนื้ิอปูผัดพริก.html/2
Sorry, when I click on the link I get a blank page or when I click on 2, I also get a blank page. Can you email me the receipt with the email provided? I really appreciate it, since I am salivating reading this thai dish.
This is a known issue with those who use an old version of Internet Explorer. The page loads fine on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. But even with an outdated version of IE, you should still be able to get to this recipe print page: http://shesimmers.com/easyrecipe-print/2583-0/
LOVED this post. Someday when I go back to Thailand I am keeping you on speed dial for hints on where to eat!
Also, my solution, FWIW, to the lack of separation in canned coconut milk (even I have noticed the quality has gone way down and I have only been cooking Thai curries for the last 12 years or so), has been to cook the paste in extra virgin coconut oil.
This looks very tasty; I like the idea of pounding the chilies to extract the essential oil. I would definitely de-seed the chilies, though, as that harshness would, IMHO, be overpowering with the delicate crabmeat. I could probably eat the whole lot by myself, even though it says serves 2-3. Would this normally be served with other dishes?
Unfortunately I don’t live close enough to this restaurant to go there very often, but if I have a relative or friend visiting the city this is one restaurant that I regularly take people to. I have ordered many dishes from their menu and I have never run into any that were not absolute perfection in a plate. This place deserves it’s reputation. If you’re visiting the city, I recommend taking the Skytrain to the Chao Phraya River (Saphan Taksin station – but it is scheduled to close so after the stop on the other side of the river). Then take the river transit (orange flag is regular run, there are express versions of it — just make sure not to get on the tourist one because all it will do is give you a headache) and take it up to Thewes Pier. From there it is a short (10 minute) walk up to Samsen Rd (left on Samsen Rd).