KO EN American Appetizer⏱ 50 minEdit history

Crab Cake (Chesapeake Bay Style)

Name: Crab Cake (Chesapeake Bay Style)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 500 g cooked crab meat; 1 egg; 3 tbsp mayonnaise; 1 tsp Dijon mustard; 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce; 1 tsp lemon juice; 1.5 tsp Old Bay seasoning; 2 tbsp parsley; 40 g cracker crumbs or breadcrumbs; 30 g butter; 2 tbsp neutral oil; 1 lemon; 4 tbsp tartare sauce

The Chesapeake Bay crab dish, and the whole problem is binding. Every other stuffed or bound thing on this site draws its glue out of the material itself: blood sets in a sundae, salt pulls muscle protein out for a weisswurst, bicarbonate does it for mititei. Crab has none of that left. It arrives already boiled, so its protein is spent and there is nothing to draw out. The glue therefore has to be imported — egg and mayonnaise, with the least breadcrumb you can get away with — and it is set in the fridge rather than by heat. What that buys is lumps that stay lumps.

Steps

Spread the crab on a wide plate and pick out any shell with your fingertips. Do not turn it over or rake through it — a lump broken now does not go back together.
⏲ 10 min
In a separate bowl, mix the egg, mayonnaise, mustard, Worcestershire, lemon juice, Old Bay and parsley together completely first. Added to the crab one at a time, the stirring alone would break every lump.
⏲ 5 min
Pour the mixture over the crab, scatter the cracker crumbs on and fold it up from underneath five or six times with a silicone spatula. Do not knead it. As soon as no dry crumb is visible, stop.
⏲ 3 min
Divide into six and shape them without pressing — spoon them loosely into a ring or a cup instead. Aim for about 3cm tall rather than flat.
⏲ 10 min
Refrigerate at least 30 minutes, an hour if you can. This is where the binding happens, not in the pan: the fat in the mayonnaise and the butter sets again and holds the lumps. At room temperature almost nothing is holding them.
⏲ 60 min
Heat the butter and oil in a pan over medium. The crab is already cooked, so there is nothing here to cook — the point is the browning on the outside and setting the glue.
⏲ 3 min
Three to four minutes on the first side. Turn once, when the base is deep brown and releases from the pan by itself. Turn twice and it falls apart.
⏲ 4 min
Another three to four minutes on the second side, a moment on paper, then serve with lemon wedges and tartare sauce.
⏲ 4 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Under the broiler: 8-10 minutes under a hot grill instead of in a pan means nothing has to be turned, which removes the one moment they break. Much of Baltimore does it this way, at the cost of a browned base.
Grades of meat: jumbo lump is the two backfin muscles and is the entire reason this dish exists. Backfin or claw meat is broken-up and cheaper, and it needs more binder — at which point it has become a different dish.
Maryland style against restaurant style: the traditional version keeps crumb and seasoning to a minimum. Pickled onion and fried capers on top, as in the photograph here, is the modern restaurant treatment.
Salmon or prawn cakes: the same method, except that raw fish or prawn still has protein you can draw out, so much less binder is needed — and the problem this dish is built on disappears.
The exact reverse of kamaboko: that one rinses fish protein clean, draws it out with salt and sets it into a springy gel. This is the case where there is no protein left to draw out at all.

Tips

The problem is a material that cannot bind itself. Blood sets like egg and binds a sundae; salt-drawn myosin binds a weisswurst; bicarbonate does it for mititei; swelling oatmeal holds a haggis together. Crab arrives boiled, its protein already denatured, so there is nothing there to draw out.
Which is why it is set in the fridge, not in the pan. If the glue is the fat in mayonnaise and butter, then the temperature at which that glue sets is in the refrigerator, not over the heat. Skip the 30 minutes and the first cake collapses when you turn it.
Mix the wet seasoning separately and pour it over. Added one ingredient at a time, each addition needs stirring, and every stir costs you lumps.
Keep the crumb to a minimum. More breadcrumb makes them easier to shape and correspondingly less crabby. 40g is barely enough to hold 500g of meat together, and that is the intention.
Turn once. Browning says to turn when it "releases from the pan by itself"; here that rule is about structure rather than flavour.
Build them tall. Flattened they cook faster and you have compressed the lumps to do it. 3cm and a longer pan time is the better trade.
Pick the shell out by hand. Shaking it through a sieve or rinsing it under water does remove shell, and it breaks the lumps as well — and wet crab thins the binder.