Text 3399, 103 rader
Skriven 2013-08-11 01:15:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: ultimate crab cakes 1
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Since crab cakes get talked about a lot here ...

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     Title: Kenji's Crab Cake Tips  Part 1
Categories: crab, info
  Servings: 1 text file

           crab

Most crab cakes stink, made with canned, pasteurized crab meat and
are more cake than crab, packed with pasty binders and bland
fillers.

Getting Good Crab

The first problem with most crab cakes is the crab itself. It's easy
to find picked blue crab meat (the only crab variety for crab
cakes!) in pasteurized tubs, but the stuff is fishy smelling, wet,
and already overcooked. Without good crab to start with, you can't
make good crab cakes.

What you want to look for is fresh-picked lump or jumbo lump crab
meat. Crab season on the eastern seaboard runs from spring through
late fall, and on-season, it's relatively easy to find crab at a
good seafood retailer, or to order it online from a number of
sources. Off season, it's not quite so easy, but a good retailer
should be able to order you some from South American sources.
Your best bet? Just hope that you don't get a hankering for crab
cakes in the off season.

Binder Blues

Tackling the issue of binders in crab cakes is not easy. Unlike,
say, ground beef, fresh-picked crab meat does not want to bind with
itself. You can rub it and knead it and press it together all you
want and all you've succeeded in doing is turning it into pasty mush
that still doesn't want to stick together. What you need is some
form of un-coagulated protein to make every stick together. The
classic choice is egg, which not only adds protein, but also adds
moisture and some degree of leavening power.

But a simple egg and crab mixture is impossible loose, nearly
impossible to form into cakes that stay in shape, they simply sag
and spread out like a deflated jellyfish.

Saggy cake

In order to solve this problem you generally add some sort of starch
binder. The more of these binders you add, the easier it is to form
cakes and maneuver them in a pan, but the worse the finished texture
of the dish.

Low-binder crab cakes easily fall apart.

Binders are usually applied in one of two methods. The first is to
add eggs and flour along with some mayonnaise creating an almost
batter-like consistency. The mayonnaise adds fat to the lean crab
meat, as well as a bit of acidic tang.

Crab Batter

As the cakes cook, the batter sets up, while the eggs help leaven it
slightly. You end up with a crab cake that is vaguely pancake or
fritter-like in texture. Not terrible, but not what I'm going for.
Alternatively, you can add eggs and breadcrumbs in some form,
whether they're regular or panko breadcrumbs, or crushed up saltines
or oyster crackers.

Crab Paste

This method is preferable to me, as the breadcrumbs create a more
irregular texture in the cake, as well as adding some level of
flavor on their own, but even better would be to be able to go with
no extra starchy binders at all.

Eliminating starchy binders and instead going with a strict
egg-and-mayo base can work if you're willing to have your cakes look
more like lumps and if you're ok with only broiling them as opposed
to sauteeing in butter. It's better than no solution, but still I
think we can do better than compromise.

The Freezer Aisle

Back when I worked at Toro, a Spanish tapas restaurant in Boston
(and soon to be New York), I learned a neat little trick for making
cod croquettes with impossibly tender innards: Make a very soft,
barely-bound filling, then partially freeze it before coating in
bread crumbs and frying. The crumbs form a seal that keep the
filling from falling apart as they fry, resulting in a croquette
with a crisp exterior and interior that literally melts in your
mouth.

MMMMM-------------------------------------------------

YK Jim


... Scenes not shown on Star Trek: Kirk gets crabs

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