Know Filipino Food: Curacha or Spanner Crabs

I just had these crabs for the first time today. My cousin Steven just bartered a gallon of coconut wine and a 1.5 liter of Coke with the fishermen to have these spanner crabs which my friends say are pricey and a luxury in the city markets. This is not popular in our locality, no one buys them actually. However, the fishermen know this is tasty and it has more meat than regular crabs.

I had to post this in Facebook earlier to really know if it is edible and if people know what it is and a lot of my friends from all over the country responded and they all agreed that it is edible and one of the expensive kind of crabs in the markets here in the Philippies. Some even suggested a recipe that is available online. It is quoted to sell at about 800-900 Pesos per kilo which is already like 5 times more expensive than pork.

We had this for dinner, indeed, it is tasty and meaty. We left some for tomorrow, we will try another recipe we saw online. At first, we were hesitant about eating it, when we had no idea what it was, but after I posted it in Facebook and did a little Google search, we were now excited to have it.

Facts about it says, it dwells in the depths of the ocean, at about 10-100m deep and nocturnal. They bury themselves in the sand in day time but goes out at night time to hunt for fish. My cousin had to brush each and wash it well many times because the fishermen told him that these stays in the mud at the bottom of the ocean. One thing distinct about it is the red color when raw, and it stays red after it is cooked.

Here is what it looks before we cooked it:

Here is how it looked after it's cooked:

All images in this post are mine.