Remark: This post is inspired by a #kopitiam series I heard over BFM – scarcity of seafood, some reality food show and some of my experience that I encountered over past years.
Who do not love seafood? Malaysia certainly being blessed with many type of food that we can enjoy, not only with one cooking method but with a few varieties from different races. Before an actual meal is cooked, it involves processes such as buying the best ingredients from wet market.
Wet market. Whom of you out there have not visited one. I remember back in those days when I was a kid, I was constantly drag by my grandma or mom to accompany them to market as part of more like a person to help them carry staff which they bought. It can be very heavy with some purchase of meat and seafood item.
During the processes, you will certainly hear the most famous phrase from most buyers or auntie after checking out the price display on the deck which will the bargaining process. Most of these housewife,auntie, grandma have great bargaining skills that they are able to bargain either from price or if there are no discounts, they would get one or two items extra.
I was also constantly taught by both my grandma and mom that everything you buy from market must look at their weight when putting it on the weighing machine to ensure you get what you are looking for. This is natural human behavior when we were at wet market at that time as thru the environmental influence.
What about when we go to fancy restaurant? We often got carried off on a great meal that we are looking forward after long day or a great gathering with friends and families. Upon ordering, we always order on what recommendation from the restaurant manager themselves and we just placed the order happily till we forgot the processes when I was thought in market where the environmental influence kicks in.
There are certain restaurant that will show you the seafood that you have ordered along with a scale before putting into cooking and some they just came out such as one of the restaurant that me and my best friend visited, we know they charged premium and we are happily being charged by it because of the quality and services. I am sure some of you felt ripped off on certain occasions.
For me it is such as this two occasions:
1: traveling to Johor and my friend introduce me one her favourite place. Then by looking so many people ordering crab, we have decided to order and our carelessness was did not ask for the pricing per kg before ordering. When paying for our bills, it is sky rocket and we got no choice but have to pay (which I did not blog about it).
2: Used to be one of my favourite all time place to be, till I pay a visit back to them early 2015 and since then have promise not to go back because of quality of crab and price, where we felt the amount we ordered do not justify on the amount that came out (review).
It was not until this experiment kicks in, where I hunt a few restaurants and the results got my eyebrows raised as high as the sky through this findings. I am not too sure what had happen during the process, where now I am just as curious as a 3 year old kid on this.
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Ya lo ........ we never really know that we got cheated or not until you write this post. Most of the time we just place order say want 2KG. But when served, we were surprised sometimes feels too little. How come ah ? Is it because the crab drink too much water? LOL
But now we know. They don't shrink that much. Good article!
still quite curious kan
isn't the selling weight before cooking? like... when live. so maybe after cleaning and cooking, the weight reduced?
Crabs are weight when they are whole. After processed and cooked it will lose some weight for sure. Because of trimming like gills, intestine etc. And during cooking process it will lose some moisture.
Hi Brandon,
Thanks for your explanation. My curiosity is that will it lose that much?
there is one way to put this theory to rest and that is for someone to actually buy 2 whole crab and take them home and clean and cook them in the same fashion as the crabs in the pictures , weight the before and after with the same set of scales each crab separate, this will give you a real answer and not maybes , i know one crab for sure that i hate buying straight out of a live tank and its what we call a spanner crab , the bloody thing carries allot of water in its shell when its in a tank or when its been boiled and sold cooked ,
Hi Leonard,
will learn to do that, thanks for the tip