Bankaku is famous premium Japanese seafood confectionary gourmet brand that specialises in prawn crackers, or ebi senbei. They use premium ingredients, and their prawn crackers are especially flavourful, but otherwise not particularly unusual. However, I discovered in a special winter gift box collection (Fuyu Kasane) that they also had a red snow crab cracker (zuwaigani senbei). This was unusual enough to post about.
Their snow crab comes from Canada, Alaska or Russia. They boil it and then immediately after that, deep freeze it to lock in the sweet and umami flavours, and to preserve the melt-in-your-mouth tenderness of the flesh.
The colour of the cracker had a prominent reddish pink hue, which was difficult to capture without some image enhancement.
As usual for Bankaku's premium standards, the cracker was very crispy and crunchy, with a fine sandy texture, akin that which comes from soft shell crab or prawn shells that are deep-fried until they are edible then powdered.
It is typical to their other seafood senbei, but not typical to other brands of rice cracker. I'm not sure if it comes from actually including ground seafood shell inside, but it was a very pleasant fine-sandy crisp.
There was a very strong seafood crab fragrance that permeated the air upon opening the small packet, almost like I had opened a whole bag full of fresh barbequed seafood snacks.
Taste-wise, the crab flavour was akin to a strong and fresh sea-salt crab taste, and it permeated the whole cracker strongly. Think of those dried pure squid or fish strips sold as snacks in stores, but without a fishy taste and with a more crab-like taste.
This is the ingredients list (click image to enlarge).
The translation is: Zuwaigani (snow crab), starch, prawn, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, flavouring, red yeast colouring. As you can see, it's possible that some of the colouring came from the red yeast additive. Also, they added some prawn, so that could explain the richer seafood flavour. Finally, their senbei crackers just use starch - no rice or wheat flour.
Overall, it was a very premium gourmet snack that is good for gift-giving, as long as no one is allergic to seafood.
Discover more seafood treats
- Another snack with zuwaigani snow crab: Japanese Red Snow Crab Ice Cream by Tomoda Sailing
- Cereal Prawn & Bak Kut Teh Cookies by Old Seng Choong
- Amaebi (Sweet Shrimp) Zuimu Kabukiage Rice Crackers by Amanoya
- Mackerel Saba and Sea Bream Tai Sasazushi by Shibazushi from Ishikawa
- Abalone Sampling - Wild Green Lip and Black Lip from Australia, Wild Blue Lip from Mexico, and varieties from New Zealand and South Africa
- Oyster Sampling at Legal Seafoods - Wianno, East Beach Blonde, Naked Cowboy and Little Shemogue varieties of live shucked oysters
- A Japanese Take on Chilli Crab - Chilli Crab Croissant by St Marc Cafe
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