The Crabbiness Is In The Cake

By Caroline Clough in Food on Dec 11, 2006 9:13PM

Chicagoist made a trip to Costco last week to restock our liquor cabinet. Despite our significant other's strong desire to stay clear of the sample stations at the end of each frozen food aisle, we meandered over to try whatever was offered anyway (four cheese lasagna and a suspect clam chowder). On the way we found ourselves in the midst of the seafood area and discovered a treasure trove of one pound cans of lump crab meat. This trove gave us an idea and if you can't guess what the idea was, well, maybe you're not up to making this dish. This dish, of course, is a pretty classic version of crab cakes.

Chicagoist has strong feelings about crabcakes. We believe that you should recognize the occasional lump of crab in a cake and not have to trust that those little shreds of something are actually crab. We believe that there shouldn't be little red pepper bits in a crab cake. We believe that a crabcake can be breaded but not to an extreme. What else? We believe that the majority of a crabcake filling should be CRAB not flour, bread or any other filler ... ever. Now that you know what we believe, you can know how we make our straight up cakes. This recipe is very similar to the recipe that was on our crab meat container and very similar to the crabcake recipe in this book. The most major change we made was the exclusion of white bread and bread crumbs and the inclusion of panko crumbs. This recipe will easily feed four people.



What You Need:
1 pound lump crab meat
1/2 cup olive oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoons Worcestire Sauce
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 1/4 panko crumbs (3/4 for the filling, the rest for the breading)
2 tablespoons flour
1/2-1 cup vegetable oil

What You Do

1. Pour about an inch's worth of vegetable oil into a cast iron (or other heavy duty) frying pan) and heat. You're looking for an oil temperature around 375 degrees.

2. Mix the crab, olive oil, eggs, spices, mayonnaise and juice all together.

3. Add 3/4 cup panko and 2 tablespoons flour.

4. Form cakes in the same way you would form a hamburger ... but maybe slightly smaller.

5. Dip the cakes in the remaining panko bread.

6. Once the oil is hot enough, throw those cakes right in!

7. Give each side about five minutes or until the cakes are golden brown and have an internal temperature of about 145 degrees.

8. Serve with lemon wedges and lettuce. Tartar sauce and ketchup are optional.