So crab Rangoon has little to do with Asia itself but many of you have an affinity for the crispy deep-fried wontons filled with cream cheese. Your comments here and on Facebook made me think that yeah – crab Rangoon deserves to be in the pantheon of Asian dumplings. The thing is that most of what we’ve tasted inside the Chinese restaurant version of these wontons is cream cheese. As a lactose-intolerant Asian, I’m disappointed by such a fried morsel. Where’s the crabbiness? There’s not even fake Krab!
The world is full of tasty dumplings to eat so I don’t like to waste time or calories on bad ones. If there’s a carb overload to be had, let’s make it really worth it, especially when deep-frying is involved. So here’s my crab Rangoon recipe. If you contrast it to the original recipe in the Trader Vic’s Pacific Island Cookbook, you’ll notice that my crab Rangoon recipe contains more crab. Trader Vic’s opted for a 1:1 ratio of cream cheese to crab meat. Let’s not fool around. We’ve been missing the crab for too many decades. Get good crab meat – the kind you’d use in crab salad or crab cakes.
Also, I’m a sucker for black pepper with crab so there’s a nice amount in there, and fresh scallion too. But to keep the mid-century flavor, I opted to use garlic powder. I was out of A-1 sauce and found a worthy – if not better—substitute in Japanese Tonkatsu sauce, which I had around from making the Japanese takoyaki dumplings (octopus balls). You could use a drop of Worcestershire or black vinegar too.