I adore crab cakes. They are delicious and quite easy to make. Sadly, the price of lump or jumbo crab meat has become prohibitively expensive, especially because I like to make crab cakes in rather large quantities, requiring 4 cups of crab meat.
Whole Foods has given my crab recipe a new lease on life. The chain has begun offering cooked Dungeness and snow crab, not cheaply, but affordable at about $16 a pound in my New York City market. To view Whole Foods page on Dungeness crab, click here.
Dungeness crab from Whole Foods.
Of course, this is for unshelled crab, which requires time and much patience to retrieve all the succulent meat. I found I needed 3 pounds of the unshelled crab to yield four cups of meat. On the plus side, for me, is the fact that I, unlike most people, prefer the taste of these two crabs to the blue crab, which is sold as lump or jumbo crab meat.
I combined both the Dungeness and the snow crab. In comparing the two, the snow crab is slightly superior in its sweetness of taste. However, it has a higher shell-to-meat ratio and is more difficult to shell. Therefore, I recommend using the Dungeness crab, which grows along or Pacific coast.
If spending time shelling crab is beyond your endurance, you could halve my crab cake recipe and use shelled lump or jumbo crab, which comes from blue crabs caught mostly off the Atlantic coast, especially the Chesapeake Bay area.
Mince the shallots.
Mince the shallots.
Finely mince a small carrot.
Mince the carrot.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter and gently cook the shallots and carrots until just softened slightly. Stir in the fresh bread crumbs or panko and cook just until the crumbs are moistened.
Cook the shallots, carrots, and crumbs.
Mince the celery stalk and the parsley, and combine in a large bowl with the crab meat. When the shallot/carrot mixture has cooled, add it to the crab.
In another bowl, beat the eggs, then beat in the cream, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, Old Bay Seasoning, salt, and white pepper.
Prepare the liquid ingredients.
Stir the egg mixture into the crab mixture. Form into cakes. It should yield about 12 crab cakes. Chill the cakes for 1-2 hours, which makes for easier frying, as the cakes hold together better.
Form into cakes.
Coat the crab cakes in the fine, dry bread crumbs.
Coat the patties in crumbs.
Fry in about 3 tablespoons of butter, plus 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, until nicely browned on both sides.
Brown the crab cakes.
Serve crab cakes with lemon wedges. Leftover crab cakes can be reheated in a skillet with a little butter and still taste very fresh.
