Food You Can Eat: Soft-Shell Crab Cakes

You can almost feel those refreshing ocean breezes

29/7/21 MatthewCrawley 39
Image via mommalew.com

That beach house I keep talking about was in the mid-Atlantic region. The seven of us came from DC and NYC so this was a convenient sort of half-way point for us. This recipe comes from an oceanside restaurant that was in the beach town, long gone sadly. This makes 4 hamburger-size patties or 10 smaller ones. The best thing is this recipe basically works for any kind of shellfish and some other seafood, like regular crabmeat, salmon, tuna or lobster, so it’s adaptable but experiment and see what you like.

1 1/2 cups breadcrumbs, you might end up using a little less

5 or 6 tbsp. decent mayonnaise

2 small or medium eggs, whisked

4 tsp. lemon juice (1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. if you want to do it that way)

2 tsp. Old Bay seafood seasoning

2 onions, diced

I lb. soft-shell crab meat. Unless you’re in the mid-Atlantic you might have to use canned but if you can get your hands on the little creatures use those. It’s time consuming to pick out the meat but worth it.

Some butter for frying, 1 or 2 tbsp.

Combine 1/2 cup of the breadcrumbs with everything else but the soft-shell crab and the butter. Then, fold in the crab meat. With your hands make this into 10 balls and flatten them in your palms so they’re flat, less than an inch thick, or 4 patties like you would a hamburger but a little smaller and thicker if you prefer them that way. In a shallow dish coat the patties with the remainder of the breadcrumbs.

Melt butter in your skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the ten mini-patties for 3—4 minutes on each side or the 4 larger patties 5—6 minutes on each side. Your patties will turn a nice warm golden brown but shouldn’t blacken anywhere. 

Serve these with an aioli (a garlicky mayonnaise) or tartar sauce, lemon wedges, and fries if you’re the carefree sort or a simple garden salad. You can also serve the larger patties as sandwiches. Take 4 brioche rolls, slice them in half, butter the interiors, and put in an oven at 250 degrees or so butter-side down until they’re a little crispy, maybe 3 or 4 minutes on a baking sheet. Top with aioli or tartar sauce and lettuce and/or tomato. 

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39 Comments

  2. It is very simple and in my years going down to that town I have come to appreciate that Old Bay seasoning is a miracle food, or spice, or addition, whatever you want to call it. 

  3. By “soft-shell crab” do you mean not a hard crab like we get in New England, or do you mean a crab that has just shed?  Because in Maryland, they just fry the whole thing and put it on a bun.

  4. So my boyfriend lives at a marina and is crabbing for fun. He throws the pots out off the dock every day with some disgusting old turkey necks or chicken parts in there and is pulling out a dozen big ass crabs a day. Then he steams them, picks them all and brings me like 1-2 lbs of crab meat on the weekends. It’s ideal, frankly, because picking crabs is a pain in the ass.

    I made crab cakes this weekend, using a very similar recipe and my air fryer!

    Also, JO’s is the ‘old bay’ for those in the know! https://www.jospices.com/

     

    • And you’re in the Midlantic area. Is he pulling out soft-shell crabs? I can’t believe I’ve never (to my knowledge or memory) seen a breaded whole one in a sandwich. It’s like walking into a McDonald’s for the hundredth time and realizing they have french fries. Granted at the beach house we ate most dinners at home (cheaper, everyone was sunstruck, I was not the only cook in the house) but still…

      • Ok, so I think Lemmy is on to something. “Soft shell” crabs are just blue crabs in a different stage of molting. 

        The ones the bf is pulling out of the bay are Maryland blue crabs, they have hard shells and after you steam them you have to pick them, as demonstrated here:

        • Over here in the Pacific where good crabs come from, you can’t harvest “soft shelled crabs”. I get you crab Heathens will eat anything but yikes!

          • Why is there a requirement to release soft-shell crabs?
            A soft-shell crab will yield less than 20 percent of its weight in meat while a prime hard-shell crab will yield 25 percent of its weight in meat. Harvesting crab when they are hard-shell maximizes the yield for a given number of crab.
            More significant, however, is that the meat from a soft-shell crab is of very low quality compared to meat from a harder cousin. People have described this meat as watery, mushy, lacking in texture, or even “jelly-like” and as a result it is often thrown away. Carefully releasing these soft-shell crab eliminates this wastage and allows the crab to be harvested later, when meat quality and quantity is greatest.

            • I think that probably varies from species to species.  Many people prefer “soft shell” (more accurately “new shell”) Maine lobsters even though they have less meat in them, because the meat is sweeter and less gamey tasting.

              • That may well be but when I went to Maryland & DC after hearing so much about how great the crab was I was very disappointed after what we get here & from my Alaska fisherman buddies.  I’m not the greatest authority on crab but Pacific king, snow, dungeness, and rock crab all taste better to me than blue or anything else I have had on east coast or in New Orleans where I have family.  

        • Here is my version of the nomenclature.  In New England, we have hard shell crabs (Rock Crabs and the like).  As in, the shells are very hard and they are difficult to pick.  We would consider the Maryland Blue Crab a sort of “soft shell” crab, because you don’t need hammers and knives and shit to get them open.  In Maryland, a “soft shell” crab is a blue crab that has just shed and the shell hasn’t hardened yet.  It is still soft enough to eat whole.
           
          Maine lobsters are similar.  They shed, but lobstermen generally don’t keep freshly shed lobsters, because they are defenseless and will just get eaten by the other lobsters in the tank.  I’m pretty sure most “soft shell” crabs actually shed after they’ve been caught and are in holding tanks at a wholesaler somewhere.  Generally after shedding a lobster won’t even come out of hiding until its shell has hardened up a bit.  We call these “soft shell, “new shell,” or just “shedders.”

    • :/
      um, I’d be kinda hestitant to eat anything caught in a marina if I had other options… 
      But catching crabs isn’t too difficult from what I remember, but I think we also did it as an active activity – if we left whatever bait material out there for more then a few minutes or so, it would be entirely consumed…

      • If you ever need to get rid of someone, take them crabbing.  Always my plan for boyfriends of my daughters I don’t like.  Shit, I think I’m watching too much Dexter.

          • I need more info?  Crab pots are steel cages so if I stick the body parts in there why do I need the other stuff?  Is this some redundancy/backup thing?

            • oh hell, this is getting way too specific, I’m going to end up on a watchlist or something…
               
              uh, say, for reasons, we had a pig carcass we needed to dispose of, and couldn’t use the normal methods of pig carcass disposal…
              roll it up in the chicken wire with the weights, and drop it into the water.  Crabs and other critters will take care of the disposal, and the chicken wire keeps it together so individual parts don’t float off. 
              I guess the bones will sit around for a while, which may be an issue…
               
              In my defense, I mostly just try to avoid pigs that upset me

  5. Now I just want to retract this entire post. I swear that town had all kinds of restaurants and boardwalk places serving soft shell crabs but never whole and breaded. Over the weekend I’m going to call the other six members of the beach house and ask about their soft shell crab memories OVER THE TWENTY-FIVE YEARS  that we used to rent houses there. Did I ever go to that town? Do I even know these six housemates? Is this a variation of “Inception”?

  6. Maybe we should do a crab ranking post?  These fuckers need to get run over by a bus & often do. I’ve heard stories of WW2 almost being lost because these fuckers stole shit from the soldiers in the South Pacific as they hit the beaches.  Although, I have won money on them in crab races at Club Med.
     
     


     

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