Buying a crab

[Sergei82]

Can anyone remind/advise me a good place in Singapore to buy a BIG crab for reasonable price? (those flower crabs from Fair price don't have any meat in them) Search on the forum gives me way too many unrelated threads (e.g. how come "Maid was stealing" comes up when I type "buy crab" - not the most intelligent search engine//or not the most intelligent me).

[sundaymorningstaple]

If buying Mangrove crabs, stay away from the giant crabs as they are full of meat normally, BUT the shells are damned thick and you have to remember you are buying by the kilo or size and the meat weighs less than the shell does!

For crabs in general (e.g., flower or blue swimmers - same crab and any other species) try not to buy during the full moon (couple of days before and after as crabs tend to molt (shed) on the full moon and if you get one recently shed they will be empty. They will look big but only have the meat that was in their old shells before getting a new, larger shell. If you let the crab vendor pick your crab you can bet you will have a white/light crab during that period (and any other time as well) I grew up crabbing so I always make the vendor let me pick my own crabs (and they don't much like it when you clean out all their 'good' crabs and leave them with white/light crabs only). Always ensure you get a fixed quote per crab (size) or per kilo weight before you start picking (once the vendor sees you know your way around crabs he'll try to change prices on you). Once you find a decent vendor use them often, they will come to know you and won't try to cheat you. (Ang Mo tax). Make sure you take your wife with you to offset the Ang Mo tax!

Have a read of the two threads that Emergency123 linked to.

[woodmist]

You can try getting one at the east coast..

[earthfriendly]

Spot on. One time we found a big crab close to the parking lot, begging to be brought home and turned into a chilli crab .