When I saw this recipe on TikTok (duh), my mouth was salivating already. It’s a simple dish to make but I did have to venture out to Chinatown to grab a bottle of crab paste.

Don’t ask me what is in crab paste, I hope there is crab but I don’t love that it says formula 2 on this bottle lol. The bottle is also kind of pricey, I think this was almost $9.00. I asked the lady the price and she was nice but was defensive when she told me the price because she said this is the good one. Okay, I’ll take your word for it lady!

Funny story, some folks add other seafood like mussels to this but I decided to add squid. Times had baby squid on sale so I bought a box. The cashier starts scanning it and then asks me if I fish. If you know me, you know that I absolutely do not fish. She asks what I’m going to do with it and I was like…”eat em?” and she mentioned that a lot of fisherman buy this to use as bait for fishing. Well come time to make this dish, I regretted buying this box of baby squid with every ounce of my soul. The amount of cleaning and prep work I had to do with the baby squid was insane – it was not worth my time or efforts cause by the time it was “cooked” there was barely any meat. Ugh! No wonder it’s used as bait for fishing.

Garlic and Crab Paste Sauteeing!

Add the shrimp to the sauce and stir fry

Add jalapenos and green onions and continue cooking until the shrimp is cooked through (and look! Where even is the squid! Ugh!)

Cambodian Shrimp Stir Fry

1 bottle of crab paste
2 lb. head-on shrimp, deveined
1 head of garlic, minced
2 T oyster sauce
1 t chicken bouillon
1 t black pepper
1 T chili oil
1 T sugar
3-4 jalapenos, sliced (keep the seeds for extra spice!)
3 green onions, chopped into 2 inch sticks
1 T neutral oil

Heat up a wok and add neutral oil and garlic, fry until fragrant. Add entire body of crab paste and heat up for about 1 minute or 2. Add shrimp, oyster sauce, chicken bouillon, black pepper, chili oil and sugar and stir fry for about 3 minutes. Add jalapenos and green onions and continue to stir-fry for about 6-7 minutes or until the shrimp is cooked through.

Very spicy but very delicious! Definitely a rice thief dish. Chan and I enjoyed it immensely!

Recipe Credit: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8kvRc6S