We Tried Bangkok's Legendary Crab Glass Noodles

Bon Appétit

In this edition of Street Eats chef Lucas Sin is in Bangkok, Thailand to visit a noodle stand that's been in operation for 4 decades, ordering up their legendary glass noodles with crab.

Transcript

00:00 ♪♪

00:03 It's a rainy day in Bangkok,

00:04 and we're here to see the master at work.

00:06 We're here to get some crab with glass noodles.

00:10 This stall has been here for 38 years,

00:12 and they've been making this stellar, well-awarded dish.

00:16 So, here is the setup.

00:18 Four burners going on at once.

00:20 These modern iterations of the clay pot,

00:22 stainless steel pots, loaded with aromatics.

00:25 And chef has a very zen-like approach to the cooking.

00:28 This is one of my favorite places to stand

00:30 because you get to watch a master at work.

00:33 I mean, he's cooking with one fork.

00:34 This is maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen.

00:36 And he's slowly watching the doneness of the glass noodles.

00:40 It's a really simple dish,

00:41 which means that every single ingredient needs to be perfect.

00:46 A lot of people have this idea of what street eats are supposed to be.

00:48 It's frenetic. It's a middle of the street. It's crazy.

00:50 It's, like, all sorts of things going on. It's chaotic.

00:52 But this is one of the most serene, clean,

00:55 and beautiful places to eat street food in Bangkok.

00:59 Look at how polished these pots are.

01:02 Like, there's no drippy, droppy anything anywhere.

01:05 Like, look at these, like, live crabs.

01:08 They're sorted.

01:09 By the way, they have a limited number of every day.

01:12 That's when you know the ingredients are good.

01:15 And they're rare.

01:16 These are what I know to be flesh crabs.

01:18 They're known for their big, juicy, sweet claws.

01:21 And because they're female,

01:23 these crabs are also juicy, filled with roe.

01:26 Come over here.

01:28 In each of these clay pots is layered aromatics.

01:33 On the bottom is the lard to keep things from sticking,

01:36 white pepper, and Sichuan peppercorn.

01:39 There's little cloves of Thai garlic,

01:41 trimmed scallion, and a little bit of cilantro,

01:44 and importantly, cilantro roots.

01:46 And when an order comes in,

01:47 a butcher will kill the crab,

01:50 get rid of all the parts that he doesn't want,

01:53 cleaves it in half one more time,

01:55 takes off the claw.

01:57 He's cracking it so that it cooks quickly,

02:00 but also that it eats quickly,

02:03 layering it precisely over the aromatics.

02:07 One entire crab per clay pot.

02:11 That's the roe, orange.

02:13 The green, that's the tamale, or crab fat.

02:15 But this is all going to cook quite consistently.

02:18 This stack here next to Chef,

02:20 that's how he knows what to make.

02:22 So the beginning of the cooking process

02:24 is all about dry heat.

02:25 As the heat comes up from the bottom,

02:27 the lard starts to render,

02:28 and the aromatics start to activate.

02:30 If it were to be wet, you wouldn't get the same aromas,

02:32 and you wouldn't get the same flavors.

02:34 That's important.

02:35 Baking in the Chinese or Asian sense of the word

02:37 means putting a lid on top of a pot

02:39 so that it cooks by convection inside.

02:41 Once that lid goes over the top of the clay pot,

02:43 the baking process begins.

02:46 Come look at this.

02:48 That's the basic seasoning for the glass noodle.

02:50 First, a heaping scoop of oyster sauce,

02:53 Thai-style oyster sauce, a little bit lighter in color.

02:55 A dash of maggi, a squirt of oil,

02:58 a little bit of white pepper, and a little bit of water.

03:01 That's when he adds glass noodles

03:03 that are soaked in a little bit of water

03:05 that he tears to the specific length

03:07 that he needs them to be.

03:08 You have to measure the amount of moisture that's going in

03:10 because too much, you dilute the flavor.

03:12 Too little, and your food burns.

03:15 Sizzle, lid.

03:17 And he's slowly watching the doneness of the glass noodles.

03:20 He's flipping it to put the less-cooked noodles on the bottom,

03:23 not only to make sure that the noodles themselves are fully cooked,

03:26 but to use it as a cover for the different parts of the seafood

03:30 to encourage them to cook at a faster rate.

03:33 The noodles are the lid, right?

03:35 They're also literally the conducting heat

03:39 up through hot liquid, through this lid,

03:41 through this noodle, on top of the crab

03:44 so that the crab itself cooks.

03:46 Also see that that liquid on the bottom

03:48 is getting thicker and thicker and thicker.

03:50 That's good for a couple of reasons.

03:52 For one, when it's thicker, it means that water is evaporating.

03:54 The stuff that is left behind

03:56 is therefore more condensed in flavor and more flavorful.

04:00 Second, as it's getting thicker and thicker,

04:02 it's going to start coating the noodles

04:04 and coating that seafood.

04:06 What's causing it to coat is not an addition of cornstarch

04:09 or any, like, slurry,

04:11 but rather the things that are coming off the crab

04:14 and the seafood itself.

04:16 Look at those scallions.

04:18 It's only the center of the scallion.

04:20 Young scallions at that.

04:22 Scallions are a very Thai-Chinese way of seasoning seafood.

04:27 Chef's got an internal clock.

04:29 He knows which pot went on first.

04:31 He knows which pot to take off first.

04:33 He knows when to add the noodles.

04:35 He has a sixth sense for when to add the scallions.

04:38 The scallions will begin to wilt.

04:40 They'll become bright green,

04:42 and at that point, the noodles should be fully translucent,

04:45 and it should be done.

04:46 So pretty.

04:48 When people think about street food in Bangkok,

04:52 people think about chaos.

04:53 They think about, like, these streets bustling,

04:56 all that energy, all these things happening at once.

04:58 But this place is not like that at all.

05:01 Here at Somsak, the cleanliness and the meticulousness of that chef

05:05 seems to permeate as energy throughout the street.

05:09 It's just you and the food.

05:11 Oh, gorgeous.

05:16 Crab has really given a lot of itself to this broth.

05:22 They give you two forks because all the noodles are here,

05:25 translucent and brown all together.

05:28 And to divide them up,

05:30 you're going to have to split them up like this.

05:34 There you go.

05:36 And then the broth is going to be the broth.

05:39 So you're going to have to mix it up.

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08:23 It always comes down to culinary technique.

08:25 Chef here is a legend for a good reason.

08:27 The dish itself is so simple.

08:29 But when the ingredients are this good,

08:31 and when the chef is this thoughtful about the cooking,

08:33 you can't go wrong.

08:35 By the way, you can get takeout here

08:39 in classic Thai fashion,

08:41 in heat-resistant plastic bags.

08:43 You can get the entire dish, packaged to go,

08:45 delivered to you in a buffet.

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