Crab Omelette with Sweet & Sour Sauce (Kanitama) (2024)

Crab Omelette with Sweet & Sour Sauce (Kanitama) is a Chinese dish, but the texture and the flavour of the sauce are made to suit to the Japanese palate. The fluffy omelette contains crab flavoured fishcake and vegetables.

The Chinese name of today’s dish is ‘foo yung hai’ (芙蓉蟹), which originated in Chinese Indonesian Cuisine. The ingredients include beaten eggs, vegetables, and meats such as crab meat, where the last character of the Chinese name ‘蟹’ came from.

The Japanese name for Crab Omelette is ‘kanitama’ (蟹玉 or カニ玉), which translates to crab egg. The character ‘玉’ is the first character of ‘tamago’ (玉子), i.e. egg. It’s just like how the Japanese name of Garlic Chives And Egg Stir-fry with Bean Sprouts, my other egg dish, got the name ‘niratama’ (ニラ玉).

Excepting the thick sauce, Kanitama is almost identical to the topping of Tenshinhan (天津飯) which I posted some time ago. There are many variations of the Crab Omelette, but in Japan it always uses crab meat as the name suggests. The vegetables can vary so long as they are good for stir-fry.

Budget Version of Crab Omelette with Sweet & Sour Sauce

I referenced the Crab Omelette with Sweet & Sour Sauce (Kanitama)recipe by Iron Chef Chinese, Chen Kenichi, to come up with my Crab Omelette with Sweet & Sour Sauce. The Iron Chef’s recipe uses real crab meat, but I used imitation crab meat called ‘kanikama’ (カニカマ), because crab meat is expensive and I wanted it to be a weekday meal.

Kanikama is a crab flavoured fishcake and is sold as ‘crab sticks’ in English (sample photo below). It is made by mixing white flesh fish paste, crab extract, salt, starch, and egg white, so it does contain protein. It is naturally much cheaper than real crab, so today’s recipe is a budget food recipe.

More details of kanikama can be found in the ALTERNATIVE TO CRAB MEAT – KANIKAMA section of the post Tenshinhan.

The Iron Chef’s recipe also uses quite a lot of oil because it’s a Chinese dish. A large amount of oil makes the stir-fried egg fluffier, but I cut down the quantity of oil slightly to be a bit healthier.

What’s in My Crab Omelette with Sweet & Sour Sauce

There are quite a few ingredients involved in this recipe, but all of them are familiar ingredients.

Omelette

• Eggs
• Kanikama (crab flavoured fishcakes), shredded
• Dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated and thinly sliced
• Enoki and white shimeji mushrooms cut into short pieces
• Green onion, diagonally sliced
• Ginger finely julienned
• Salt and pepper
• Cooking sake
• Sesame oil
• Oil

If you have freshly cooked crab meat or crab meat in a tin, by all means, use it as an alternative. Try to get some large chunks of meat if you are using real crab meat.

Enoki and white shimeji mushrooms can be substituted with other Asian mushrooms. The kanikama and vegetables need to be cut into similar sizes, because they are mixed in the egg.

Sweet and Sour Sauce

• Chinese-style Chicken broth
• Cooking sake
• Sugar
• Rice wine vinegar
• Salt
• Soy sauce
• Corn flour diluted in water

You can use Easiest Chinese Chicken Broth or use a stock cube/paste diluted in hot water. It is also OK to use chicken and pork broth if the flavour of the pork is not dominant.

I used a Japanese instant broth paste called ‘weipā’ (味覇 or ウェイパー), which is made from chicken and pork bones. I like this broth because the paste dissolves very easily.

How to Make Crab Omelette with Sweet & Sour Sauce

There are 3 major steps – stir-fry crab and vegetables, cook fluffy omelette with crab and vegetables, and cook sweet & sour sauce.

1. Add oil to a wok or a frying pan and stir-fry vegetables.
2. Add kanikama to the wok/pan, stir-fry, then sprinkle sesame oil over. Transfer to a plate and let it cool slightly.
3. Beat the eggs in a bowl, then add salt, pepper, and cooking sake to the bowl. Mix.
4. Put the stir-fried vegetables with kanikama and green onions into the egg and roughly mix.
5. Heat the pan with oil over high heat and cook the egg mixture into a round shape. Transfer the omelette to a serving plate.
6. Wipe the wok/pan, put all the Sweet and Sour Sauce ingredients in, excluding corn flour/cornstarch, and bring it to a boil.
7. Add corn flour/cornstarch to thicken the sauce and pour it over the omelette.

It is ideal to use a small frying pan so that the omelette will not be spread thin and wide. If you only have a large frying pan, try to shift the egg mixture towards the centre as the outer edge of the egg mixture starts getting cooked, and use only the centre of the frying pan.

For this very reason, using a wok will make the shaping of the omelette easier.

The lightly seasoned Sweet and Sour Sauce allows you to enjoy the flavour of the omelette. The semi-transparent thickened sauce is delicate, and different from the sweet and sour sauce for Tenshinhan.

Yumiko