El and Bill, you asked about crab cake recipes. I’m surprised nobody jumped in – you can usually get some pretty good arguments going about who’s recipe is best. I learned long ago never to choose between my wife’s crab cakes or my mother’s – all I’ll say is that I could easily live on either one!
Here’s the recipe we use, roughly…ingredients are added and mixed more by feel than by measure, but these are reasonable estimates.
Start with a pound of crab meat, which should make about 6 crab cakes, depending on how big you like them. Use jumbo lump, the best you can find – quality of the meat makes a BIG difference. You’ll also need: 1 egg; 2 tablespoons to a cup of mayonnaise; 1 teaspoon of dry mustard, or a tablespoon of jar mustard; 1 teaspoon of Old Bay seasoning ( a local specialty – you can get it on your visit!); 2 teaspoons or a tablespoon of Worcestershire; salt; ½ teaspoon of pepper. Some folks also add a dash of Tabasco, although we don’t.
Bread crumbs are optional – we don’t use them unless we have to, and then only sparingly – sometimes helpful as a binder if you have lower quality crab meat, but if overdone it really detracts from the taste. Some folks recommend crushed saltines.
Pick through the crab meat – gently – to remove any shell and cartilage. Idea is to keep the lumps big and intact, not shred them. In a separate bowl, mix the batter, including mayo, egg, spices. When mixed, pour it over the crab meat. Toss gently to mix, again avoiding breaking up the lumps – just kind of fold the meat into the batter. Then gently form them into cakes. But be gentle and don’t press them too hard.
Because this recipe doesn’t use much in the way of additives, the resulting cakes can be a little hard to handle – refrigerating for an hour or more before cooking firms them up and makes them easier to handle (placing them on waxed paper also helps). To cook, you can sautee, fry or broil (my favorite). To sautee, use olive oil or clarified butter – make the cakes thinner so they’ll cook through, and they’ll take about 4 minutes per side (they should look golden brown when done). To pan fry, use about a half inch of oil. To broil, brush the cakes with a little melted butter, then place them about 3 inches from the heat in a preheated broiler. They take about 8-10 minutes per side I guess, but best to go by color.
For serving, my take is avoid sauces, maybe just use some fresh lemon.
Crab cakes are great, but they disappear pretty fast. For a longer social event, the Chesapeake crab feast is the way to go – steamed crabs, which you pick yourself, with plenty of beer. Tom assures us that we’ll work a crab feast into this June get together, so get ready to pick!
Here are a couple of recipes on the web, although they all rely too much on bread crumbs in my opinion:
http://www.jorbins.com/food-drink-magazine/articles/crab-cake-recipe.php
http://www.crabcakes.com/cgi-bin/ha...cipes.hzml&REQUEST=view_content&content_id=18
http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1645,157174-234207,00.html
For everything else you ever wanted to know about crabs, check out:
http://www.blue-crab.org/
Sorry for the long post, but I do love to eat crabs...
