Name: Crab Stick Salad
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Ukrainian
Ingredients: 400 g Crab sticks (surimi); 150 g Long-grain rice; 300 g Tinned sweetcorn; 4 piece Eggs; 150 g Mayonnaise; 20 g Fresh dill; 5 g Fine sea salt; 2 g Ground black pepper

About this dish

This belongs to a whole family of late-Soviet salads built from tins and mayonnaise, and like the rest of them it has no author and a hundred versions — some use rice, some potato, some neither. What they share is a logic: shelf-stable ingredients, assembled cold, better the next day, and enough of it to feed whoever arrives. Crab sticks are surimi, which is whitefish paste, and the crab in the name is decoration. Read the packet if gluten matters: most brands bind the surimi with wheat starch.

Lactose-free
Not vegetarian because of Crab sticks (surimi)
Contains gluten because of Crab sticks (surimi)

Ingredients

6servings

400gCrab sticks (surimi)
150gLong-grain rice
300gTinned sweetcorn
4piecesEggs
150gMayonnaise
20gFresh dill
5gFine sea salt
2gGround black pepper

Instructions

Cook the rice in well-salted water until tender, rinse it under cold water and drain thoroughly.
15 min
Tip: Rinsing is not optional here. Warm, starchy rice turns mayonnaise into paste; cold, rinsed rice keeps its grains separate in the bowl.
Hard-boil the eggs for 9 minutes, cool, peel and chop them.
10 min
Tip: Nine minutes again — a fully hard yolk goes chalky and dry, and in a mayonnaise salad that dryness is very noticeable.
Dice the crab sticks and drain the sweetcorn well. Combine with the rice and egg.
5 min
Tip: Drain the corn properly, in a sieve, not by tipping the tin. The liquid left behind is sweet and thin and it will loosen the whole salad within the hour.
Fold in the mayonnaise, pepper and most of the dill. Taste and add salt only then.
3 min
Tip: Salt last: the crab sticks, the corn and the mayonnaise are all already salted, and the amount they add together is unpredictable enough that guessing beforehand is how this becomes inedible.
Chill for at least 30 minutes and scatter the remaining dill before serving.
30 min
Tip: The resting is what makes it. Rice and crab stick both need time to take up the dressing, and eaten straight away the salad tastes like its separate parts.