The tide is low tonight. The mud flats, enveloped in the mangrove forest’s darkness, are dotted with the sporadic flares of headlamps. On bundles of exposed mangrove roots, shadows cast by black crabs crowd out one another. In my hometown, we call them “ba khía.”
I’ve never once wondered why these little crabs have that name. The words ba khía are so familiar and deeply rooted in me as natural as being; so I’ve never questioned the name or bothered to ask my parents. According to scientific sources, “ba khía” refers to the three grooves (khía) on the carapace of the species.
Photo via Vietnam.vn.
Ba khía, the tiny crab from the delta
When I was little, a telecommunication company once ran a special promotion for users of the Mekong Delta called “Ba khía SIM cards.” Not rice, shrimps, canals, but ba khía; perhaps because those features are prevalent in the delta, but not as exclusive as ba khía. The species, Episesarma mederi, only proliferates in the mangrove forests spanning along the coasts of southern provinces like Kiên Giang, Sóc Trăng, and Cà Mau.
Still, even if you’ve arrived at its hometown, it’s not a guarantee that you will be able to meet it. My grandma used to say that it’s an “ugly crab,” because it’s tiny, purplish black, and often burrows in mud. Ba khía, of course, doesn’t really care enough about what we think of it to hide away. It’s rarely seen because it’s gainfully employed and busy minding its own business, not free to show its face on the water for human spectatorship. During the day, ba khía is hard at work digging and building nests, and only leaves home at night to hunt and socialize.
Like many other crustaceans, ba khía dines on small species like fish and snails, alongside vegan options like mangrove buds, leaves, and detritus. Veteran ba khía hunters can tell with one look at the shell what the most favorite food of a specific ba khía is: those munching on mắm tree leaves will spot a shiny black shell with crimson tomalley, while a diet of white mắm fruits would produce greyish tomalley. Forest-dwelling ones feasting on mangrove leaves tend to be larger, with yellow tomalley and an attractive burgundy shell.
Thanks to its “organic diet,” ba khía flesh is tight, sweet, and filled with the flavors of the southern jungles, especially those caught from Rạch Gốc, Cà Mau Province. The southernmost locality in Vietnam is blessed with seemingly endless mangrove forests, the fertile breeding ground for ba khía. Living where the Mekong River meets the sea, ba khía that hails from this land luxuriate in alluvium-rich water, becoming the country’s best ba khía that’s well-known everywhere.
How to hunt the mangrove forest's runner
Ba khía is small and swift, quick to escape and hide in the mangrove’s nooks and crannies, so it poses a great challenge to anyone not well-familiarized with its antics. Older generations in the delta have observed their behaviors and habitats to come up with the best time to catch them: the 10th month on the lunar calendar. It is a time when crowds of black ba khía leave their burrows and congregate on mangrove roots to find mates — a time when they let their guard down to party like it’s 1999. Ba khía hunters won’t miss a prime opportunity to get access to a mother lode of crabs, so every year, during the low tides of the 10th month, the mangrove forests welcome groups of hunters packing their tools and baskets to catch ba khía.
Before becoming a delta delicacy today, ba khía was once deemed a poor man’s food, so catching it, too, was not a respected trade, even though it is quite literally a back-breaking job, involving resting and sleeping in the wilderness amongst mosquitoes, leeches, snakes, and countless other creepy-crawlies. It is often said that only the most courageous or the most desperate join this line of work.
Photo via Người Lao Động.
Today’s tech advancements have somewhat lessened the labor of ba khía hunts, but to reach these crabs, one would still need to hang around in the woods at night with a headlamp to examine every root bundle. A quick reaction time is a must, because they are sneaky and would scuttle off inside the mud.
Making mắm ba khía
Since the early days of border expansion, our ancestors have used ba khía as a source of nutrition reserve for a rainy day. To increase its shelf life, they salted freshly caught crabs to produce mắm ba khía in a process that’s just as rigorous as their capture.
Traditionally, crab hunters would bring a few jars of saltwater on their trips. They would give the ba khía a quick wash once caught, then immediately drop them into the brine. One second, they were ferociously resisting with their red pincers, but not long after, they would become unresponsive due to the salinity.
Photo via Người đưa tin.
How much salt to use to make the solution is a tried-and-true knowledge only gained after years in the trade. Not enough salt means the mắm can go bad easily, but too much salt will affect the taste of the flesh and structural integrity of the shell. Salting apparati like claypots and glass jars must be thoroughly sterilized and kept in dry places to avoid rainwater. It’s a tough job that had remained largely unacknowledged until 2019, when it was officially recognized by the Vietnamese government as a national intangible heritage.
Salted ba khía doesn’t take long to become edible, as its flesh is already brackish thanks to its natural habitat. Usually, after about 10 days, if the shells don’t change color, the crabs can be consumed. Freshly caught ba khía might inspire a diverse range of preparation methods, like salt-crusting, stir-frying with garlic, or with a tangy tamarind sauce, but salted ba khía can only be eaten one way. Are delta residents the most loyal eaters, or is this preparation so failsafe that we never thought to invent new ones?
Photo by Huỳnh Anh/TTX Việt Nam.
First, rinse the salted crabs in warm water to wash off excess salt, remove the apron, pluck off the pincers, chop the body in half, and then mix with raw garlic, chili, lime juice, and sugar. My family would make this crab “salad” every meal. My friends’ parents would do the same.
Ba khía is biologically a true crab, but culinarily, not really. Other edible crabs have substantial flesh inside their shell for our enjoyment. Ba khía is very tiny, so you can’t deshell it properly. The only way to enjoy ba khía is biting into the whole crab and sucking off the juice and meager meat inside alongside the sweet-and-sour sauce. The flesh would literally melt in your mouth, because there’s not a lot of it.
Ba khía, the iconic Cà Mau delicacy
Not all Cà Mau inhabitants grow up knowing how to relish ba khía. There were times when I detested the smell of the jars of salted ba khía mom packed for me from our hometown. I was once that person who neglected the plate of ba khía salad in our family meals. Even so, it was very hard to resist the audible sounds my family made when feasting on ba khía. The crispy clinks when my dad shoved rice from the bowl into his mouth. The juicy slurps of the tangy sauce. My grandma carefully poured small spoonfuls of the sauce on her rice and raved about the balance of flavors.
I gave in. I thought that it was worth it to try. The jar of ba khía was the most treasured home delicacy we shared with our closest friends and relatives when they visited. Maybe it’s extremely tasty? For the first time, I welcomed the smell that I once refused. The pungent aroma of seafood resonated with the citrusy notes of lime, the heat of chili, and raw garlic. I reached for a ba khía leg with a fleck of meat on it.
Photo by Huỳnh Anh/TTX Việt Nam.
The entire family watched in triumph as their son was won over by salted ba khía. My dad said that I had then tasted half the value of Cà Mau cuisine. The other half involves slurping up the sauce. It was thick with crab umami, in between the sweet, salty, and spicy notes of the spices. Once again, my resolve was toppled.
During the years living far from home, I rarely eat ba khía. Sometimes, my friends would invite me to try Korean soy-marinated blue crab. The nuttiness of the flesh and the salty soy reminded me a lot of the plate of ba khía salad at home. Of course, it was just a poor substitute. Nothing can replace the salted ba khía in my being, the one that my mom made by hand. She would vigorously shake an entire basin of crab with the spices. The entire kitchen would smell like lime and funky crab.
I would get myself a full bowl of hot rice and sit there waiting for her plate of saucy ba khía. I would leave behind all decorum to passionately suck on the crab legs and crunch through the shells to extract the marinated meat. That and a big spoon of rice — those make up the most satisfying feeling to a child of Cà Mau.
