Tag Archives: blue crab

Crab Cake Recipe – Easy Blue Crab Recipe

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Crab Cake Recipe

Simple Crab Cake Recipe

This is a version of another crab cake recipe that has all the basics, but not all the bells and whistles. Just to give some credit, here is a link to two other recipes that we used to make our own. Now these recipes have all the bells and whistles, so be forewarned! These were a basis, as well as another home made version.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/easy-crab-cakes

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/crab-cakes-recipe.html

Crab Cake Recipe Ingredients

Crab Cake Recipe Ingredients

Draining the Crab Meat

Draining the Crab Meat

checking for more shells in Crab meat

checking for more shells in Crab meat

Our ingredients:

We had 3 cups of crab meat to mix and these amounts were great. We made about 11 really decent sized crab cakes.

1/3 cup regular bread crumbs (you will be using more bread crumbs for the outside)
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard (or spicy brown mustard)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 eggs
1 or 2 drops hot sauce (we use Louisiana hot sauce, but there are many)

You will need more regular bread crumbs and Panko style bread crumbs (for texture) for the outside of the crab cakes.

1 – Drain the juice from the meat. Similar to what you would do to a can of tuna, if you were going to make tuna salad sandwich, you wouldn’t want it to be runny. At the same time, you can be checking for shells. We harvested our own crabs, and cleaned them for the crab meat, so we have to be extra cautious.

Mixing up the Crab Cake Mix

Mixing up the Crab Cake Mix

Put Crab Cake Mix in fridge

Put Crab Cake Mix in fridge

Forming the Crab Cakes

Forming the Crab Cakes

2 – Double check for shells. Just before you start the mix it is a real good idea. Even after we checked, double and triple checked, we still had a few shells in ours, so take your time!

3 – Start by adding the mayo, lemon juice, garlic powder, mustard, pepper, worcestershire sauce, and the 2 eggs. Mix it up a little bit, then add the bread crumbs and mix up good. Now add the 1 or 2 or none drops of hot sauce and mix again.

4 – Put this mix in the fridge for 30 minutes or more.

5 – Now take a cake pan or something with a little depth in it and add equal amounts of regular and Panko style bread crumbs. We used a full cup of each in our case. With a ice cream scooper, spoon, measuring cup, or your hand, get a lump of the mix and form into the “cake” that you want. I don’t think it has to look like a hamburger patty, but thicker is usually better as it holds together better. Thinner would break too easily. You may want to separate all the meat before you bread so you can see how many crab cakes you end up with. You may need to reduce the size a little to add a few crab cakes. I want to try making “crab balls” like hush puppies, but with crab meat inside instead of just salty paste like bread. I would cook crab balls in a deep fryer.

Frying crab cake in frying pan

Frying crab cake in frying pan

6 – once you have used up all your crab meat, it is time to cook them up. If you are going to fry them in a pan, or in a deep fryer, it still takes 3 – 5 minutes to cook them. If you chose the “ball” style then a deep fryer is a must. If you cook them slow, they will cook all the way through without burning the outside. Trying to cook them fast will not do good, because you won’t cook the inside.

Frying pan – Put some regular cooking oil in the pan and cover the bottom. Now it is just like cooking a hamburger patty, put it in and let it start cooking. After a minute or two, check the bottom and if it looks good and brown, go ahead and flip it. Once you get both sides cooked, it will be a little easier to turn over. Slow is better than fast.

Frying crab cakes in deep fryer

Frying crab cakes in deep fryer

Deep fryer – Don’t stack them on top of each other, lay them side by side. Cook as many as your tray will allow at one time. We set our fryer on 160 degrees and that was good.

7 – Now just start piling them on to a tray (preferably with a paper towel) as they finish to let them drain. Pretty soon they will all have been cooked and it will be time to enjoy!

Once you have made these a time or two, then you can adjust the amounts of ingredients to your liking. I like to only add hot sauce for spice, then you can put more on it when you are eating it if you want.

 
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How to Cook Crab – Blue Crabs

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Once you have caught yourself some blue crabs or even bought some live crabs from somewhere you can get them cooked. If you have bought crab meat or whole crab claws or crab legs at the store, typically this meat has already been cooked. Re-cooking it will possibly make it taste better, especially when you cook it in a recipe or something like that.

So to start out, get the largest pot you can find that will fit on your stove. The more crabs you can get into one pot will cut down on the number of cycles you have to do. Once you get it there and not quite full of water, then turn your burner on and wait for it to boil. I did not use any seasoning or “crab boil” with this, because we are going to make crab cakes. So we will be seasoning the crab cake mix. If you want to eat the crabs after you boil them, then maybe you could season the water now.

Putting the Crab in the Pot

Putting the Crab in the Pot

1 – Once the water gets to a boil or real close to it, start putting the live crabs in the pot. A pair of tongs are ideal, since the crab pincers are still functional and very hungry for your fingers. Depending on your situation, if you have any crabs that have lost movement, get those crabs into the boiling water first. As you put the live crabs in, you will see the water rise. The water will continue to rise as it gets warmer, so be prepared to take water out if that happens.

2 – Once you have the pot full of as many crabs as will fit (and the water is boiling), then set a timer for 10 minutes. 10 minutes should be sufficient for most crabs. Large crabs, more time, and smaller crabs, less time. I would not cook any crabs for less than 8 minutes. Unless you just have an enormous amount and only a small pot, I would cook them more and not less. You DO NOT want to get sick from eating crab meat that is not cooked.

Trays of Cooked Blue Crabs

Trays of Cooked Blue Crabs

3 – Once the timer goes off, start removing the crabs and place on a tray so they can drain. A bowl might work too, but they are still the same size as when you put them in.

4 – After all the crabs have been cooked, they now need to be cleaned. This process will take up a whole other post.

 How to Clean Blue Crab for Crab Meat

Put the blue crabs in the fridge

Put the blue crabs in the fridge

5 – If you need some time in between cooking the crabs and cleaning the crabs, just put them in the refrigerator. Don’t let more than 24 hours pass though, because all the insides are still there. It may be better to process them halfway first, by just removing the top and the insides. Then they can be stored a little longer in the fridge.

 

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How to Clean Blue Crab for Crab Meat

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This post will focus on cleaning or processing the blue crab after they have been cooked and before any recipes will take place. Better said by separating the crab meat from the shell.

If you still have to make your blue crabs turn red check out this post –

How to Cook Crab – Blue Crabs

Ready to clean the cooked blue crab

Cooked crab ready to get started with blue crab cleaning station

After you have thoroughly cooked your newly caught or purchased blue crab, it is time to clean them so you can either eat them or process them for the meat. The first step is to get everything together so you don’t have to do it once you have gotten into the cleaning process.

  • Bowls for the refuse or shells – larger bowls so they can pile up the trash
  • Bucket – for the main body shell to temporarily store – these take up a lot of space and need a place to be.
  • Bowls for the crab meat – With a lid would be preferable so you can save the crab meat for another day in the refrigerator.
  • Newspaper – The more newspaper the better. This will be used for a staging area and then for cleaning up to store the trash. You can also catch up on the news and the latest sales while cleaning the crab meat.
  • Plastic bags – grocery bags work well, but trash bags or any other type can be used (re-use or recycled)
  • Nutcracker – for the claws mostly
  • A thin pokey tool – ice pick, wood skewer, toothpick, sometimes it helps to poke the meat out and not have to break it again.
Pulling off the crab claws

Pulling off the crab claws

Once you get all this together, spread some base newspaper out onto a counter or table. This is going to take a while so you want to do it somewhere that you are comfortable.

1 – start with your full trays of crabs and start pulling the claws off and putting them in a separate bowl. This will help the person who is processing them do the same thing over and over. If you are wanting to eat the crabs in spaghetti sauce or some other way where you want to leave the claws on, then skip over this step.

taking off the top shell of blue crab

Taking off the top shell of blue crab

2 – Pulling the main body shell off – wrap your finger around the point of the shell while holding your thumb towards the other side of the shell and pull straight up. The shell should pop off, then throw in the bucket or somewhere they can pile up. This will make a mess with the juice if you let them get away from you so hold still and don’t splatter.

Taking out the insides of blue crab

Taking out the insides of blue crab

3 – Now start removing the insides – the lungs, the front feelers, the backside, then the middle, this is the first step before washing. Shaking it into a bowl should loosen it up. Then pull all you can out. We want to remove all the yellow stuff, but this step won’t remove it completely.

Washing the blue crab bodies

Washing the blue crab bodies

4 – set these newly processed bodies onto another tray and now we are ready to wash the rest of the insides out.

5 – Once you are ready, start washing off the bodies. You should now be able to see that you only have meat and cartilage left. They should look clean and neat or all white. Make sure that all the yellow stuff is out of there. It should not hurt if there is a little residue left, but get as much as you can! These are now ready to eat (knowing they are thoroughly cooked). This post is going further than eating them now to get the meat ready for crab cakes. You can do many things with the blue crabs at this point.

Cracking the blue crab claws

Cracking the blue crab claws

Separating crab meat from the body

Separating crab meat from the body

6 – To process the claws, take the nutcracker and crack the main body of the claw right behind the claw joint. This should free it up to break it open. There is a piece of cartilage that has to be taken out, then there is a nice chunk of meat to harvest. The knuckle between the two claw sections does not have much in it unless the crabs are really big, then there might be a small chunk in it. The other part is the same, crack it open, remove the cartilage and harvest the meat.

Finished crab meat

Finished crab meat

7 – Cleaning the bodies is a little more challenging, because you have to pay attention to which bowl is the good crab meat and which bowl is the blue crab trash. Take and break the body in have. Leaving the legs on will give you something to hold onto while breaking it apart. Now take the half and put your thumb through the top of the shell, this will break the half into another half and begin to now separate the legs. Now that this is open, the crab meat should start to come out. Now as you break it apart by separating the legs from one another you will see the meat is attached to each leg. Continue and pull the good crab meat out and put into the bowl. The newspaper is now so you can just drop the pieces onto the counter while you are pulling the crab meat out. Some will go better than others and after you have done a few you will develop a style of separation.

Clean up crab mess

Clean up crab mess

8 – Cleaning up should have been taking place while these other steps were going on, especially if you had more than 1 dozen blue crabs. Take the shells and place in the newspaper that has been soiled while cleaning. Place this onto new newspaper and wrap up the trash with the top layer of newspaper, then continuing with the lower layers. Once you are comfortable with the amount of newspaper you can take this and place in a plastic bag and tie tight. Now take this bag and put into another bag. 3 bags is not out of line, because I would then take these smaller bags and put into a larger bag.

9 – Depending on what you are going to do with the garbage is where to go from here. I would put these into the freezer until garbage day. If you live close to the saltwater you may be able to put the garbage in there, of course without all the newspaper and plastic bags. If you put this in your garbage can, you may have a huge problem the next day if it sits too long. The juice will eventually leak out and leave you breathless from the stench.

Now you are ready to put this crab meat into a recipe for crab cakes, crab alfredo, seafood salad, and more.

 

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