

Place the cleaned crabmeat in a mixing bowl. The idea is to keep the crabmeat as lumpy as possible while sticking the mixture together so it will hold up during the cooking process. There are a few tricks that will help produce perfectly cooked, golden brown crab cakes. The cakes are easily adaptable to anyones taste, and ingredients that dont suit the cook may be omitted entirely. Add anything else from cream to cayenne pepper, throw in onion or parsley and add a dash of Old Bay seasoning to complete the recipe.

A mayonnaise or white sauce base is used with crackers or bread crumbs to bind the mixture together. Recipes vary around the country but are all geared toward holding the meat together with the least amount of extra ingredients. The cakes are easy to make and almost everyone likes them. Once the meat is cleaned it is ready to add to any number of seafood dishes.Ĭrab cakes are a great way to use crabmeat. If pasteurized crabmeat is being used, rinse it carefully and pat dry with paper toweling before picking it over. For best results, empty the container out and gently pick through the meat, trying to leave the lumps intact. Sold in one-pound containers, the meat must be picked over before its used and those who ignore this step will find unappetizing bits of shell and cartilage in their finished dish. Although its shipped fresh, fishmongers and high-turnover grocery stores are the only markets able to sell the crabmeat in a timely manner.įresh or frozen, crabmeat is easy to prepare. Crabmeat is available fresh in markets near the coast but consumers further inland usually must contend with either frozen or pasteurized meat. The picking is highly specialized as some workers pick only claws, while others pick the entire crab. In heavy commercial crabbing areas the crabs are steamed and seasoned near the docks and pickers set to work immediately.
