Ingredients
- 2.1 kg imitation crab meat
Instructions
- Blot the sticks with paper towel before you touch anything else. Surimi is packed wet, and the film of moisture on the outside is pure delay.
- Pull each stick apart along its grain into threads rather than cutting it into discs. Surimi is built as a rolled sheet, and separating the layers gives the air something to work with.
- Keep the threads to a similar thickness. One twice as thick takes more than twice as long, because the water has that much further to travel out.
- Spread them across the trays so no two threads cross. They stick to each other as they dry, and a tangle comes off the tray as one solid mat.
- Dehydrate at 63 °C for 6 hours. This is a cooked product going in, so the setting is about speed and safety on a protein rather than about preserving anything raw.
- A finished thread is stiff, faintly translucent, and breaks with a dry crack. One that still bends has moisture at its core, and the starch in surimi turns slimy if it is jarred damp.
- Cool the threads right down on the tray. They crisp noticeably as the heat leaves them, so anything judged straight out of the machine is judged wrong.
- Keep them in an airtight container for a month, or freeze them for longer. They crumble straight into crab cakes, and a few minutes in warm water brings them back if you want them soft.
Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 292 kcal | 83 kcal |
| Protein | 23.4 g | 6.6 g |
| Fat | 1.2 g | 0.3 g |
| saturated | 0.3 g | 0.1 g |
| Carbohydrate | 46.2 g | 13.1 g |
| sugars | 15.4 g | 4.4 g |
| Fibre | 1.2 g | 0.3 g |
| Sodium | 1628 mg | 461 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
