Here’s one that we make around here sometimes for festivities, often as part of a mixed bunch of appetizers/finger foods. It’s not a particularly inexpensive dish, especially if you go the fresh crab meat route (which I don’t always do), and you will be doing some pan-frying. But it’s a nice thing to break out once in a while! The ingredients are crab meat, bread crumbs, mayonnaise, an egg, some flour, and various seasonings (onion, herbs, q.v.) The preparation doesn’t take long, but you do need to chill the raw cakes down for a while before cooking them, so allow for that time.
You’ll need one pound of crab meat. The best is going to be fresh, rather than frozen or canned, but you will pay for that quality. Keep an eye out for any bits of shell that might have made their way into it. Another option (which I’ve used for this recipe) is canned lump crab meat – avoid the cans that just say “crab”, because some of those are difficult to distinguish from high-end cat food. Maybe even from low-end cat food. Go for the ones that will give you actual pieces of crab. I have not tried frozen crab for this recipe, so I don’t know how that turns out (let everyone know in the comments if you try it!)
The second key ingredient is bread crumbs. Those seem to work out best if they’re dry, not fresh (the latter can turn into something of a paste in this recipe). I’ve used home-made ones and the commercial seasoned bread crumbs from Progresso. I haven’t tried the more aggressively dried panko crumbs that you can buy, although those might be a nice outside coating once you’ve formed the crab cakes after the rest of this recipe. The amount of crumbs is going to depend on the texture and moisture level of your crab, so it’s not possible to be precise, but I would say about four tablespoons by US volume measurement, and (I just checked) that comes to about 34 grams of the Progresso variety (which are fairly fine-grained).
So add those two together, then the third member of the Seafood Cake Triad: mayonnaise. I just use a straight-up commercial one out of the jar, 1/4 cup or about 58 grams. Then it’s time to add the seasonings. Finely chopped onion (1/4 to 1/2 cup, 15 or 20g) is something I always use – green scallions are good, as is red onion, but anything you have on hand. Salt and black pepper to taste, and I like a little hot sauce as well. Worcestershire sauce is a common addition as well, so feel free! Another addition would be some Old Bay seasoning (one or two teaspoons) which is a common shrimp/crab spice mixture from Maryland that’s widely available in the US. If you have a local seafood seasoning blend to use, that should work fine as well. And another thing that I recommend is a small amount of some chopped fresh herbs, if you have them available (a tablespoon or two, 5 to 10g): parsley, cilantro (coriander leaves), and dill are all good, and you can take these in whichever direction you would like.
Mix all this together lightly; you don’t want to grind up the crab. Take one large egg and scramble it in a separate cup, and add this to the mixture while folding it around. At this point things should just be holding together – you can add a bit more crumbs or mayonnaise as needed to get a decent consistency. I then form these into the crab cakes themselves – you can make four large ones, or a larger number of smaller ones (my usual choice). I make them somewhat flattened for easier frying later. Put these on a sheet lined with aluminum foil or waxed paper and chill them down at this point. You’ll want to do this for about an hour (and you can go longer). It really makes a different in handling them – I’m not even sure they can be cooked in their freshly mixed state without falling apart, to be honest. Once chilled, roll them in flour (or maybe panko crumbs? Let us know) and fry them in some neutral-flavored cooking oil in a wide pan. I don’t deep-fry them per se – if they’re flattish, you can brown them on each side without having too deep an oil bath to cook them in at all. Use medium-to-high heat and make sure the oil is hot before adding the cakes to the pan – you can take a pinch of the mixture as a test and drop it in the oil to make sure that it sizzles and starts to cook. It’ll just take a few minutes on each side.
Serve hot with whatever sauce you like (tartar sauce, mayonnaise with additives, ketchup, cocktail sauce, soy/dumpling sauce, whatever does the trick for you). I have not had a big problem with leftovers on these, but I presume that they can be reheated if for some reason they need to be. Enjoy!
