I am a seafood lover! I love almost any seafood I can get my hands on. The only problem is, I live in Kentucky. So my access to good quality, FRESH seafood that smells like the sea and not FISH is difficult at best. My husband hates seafood, won’t even try it. I think this comes from a lifetime of being landlocked and not having good access to good, fresh, seafood.
Whenever it’s a special occasion, and I get to choose the best restaurant completely, I almost always choose an exclusively seafood restaurant because I like it all; baked, fried, boiled, you name the fish, or crustacean, and I will probably like it. My absolute favorite though has to be crab. I love, love, love, love, crab. When I order at Sushi Restaurants near me, I order, a spider roll, which includes soft shell crab. When I am at a restaurant and have the opportunity to order crab cakes, I do! I just love the natural sweetness and savory flavor that is present in the crab.
We recently had the opportunity to try out Pure Food Fish Market out of Seattle. They are located in the famed Pike Place Market, and boast to have the freshest, and highest quality seafood around. Something else that they also boast is to be able to ship this fresh, high quality seafood directly to you via their website at www.FreshSeafood.com. You can order all different types of seafood on there, anything that they can catch you can order. So, the test is can it make it to Kentucky fresh?
We received 1lb of fresh crabmeat from Pure Food Fish Market. It was shipped overnight to us, and came in a Styrofoam cooler, surrounded by icepacks. First thing that came to my mind to make was crab cakes. Now the test, when I opened the package would it smell deliciously like the sea or like fish. I cut the top off the package, and took a wiff, and a smile crossed my face, and my mouth began to water. I just received a glorious amount of the freshest crab I have ever had land locked in Kentucky. My mind immediately began building a recipe to make this crab into some delectable like cakes.
About a month ago I planted my herb garden, and I have been anxious to use them in a recipe. So I decided to go clip some herbs and make the perfect crab cakes. I decided to use cilantro, basil, rosemary, sage, and thyme. I chopped them all up together really finely, and set aside. I then put the crab into a bowl, and began to thumb through it looking for shell pieces, guess what……nada, none, zilch, all 100% crab. YAY!!!
The real secret to the perfect crab cake…..the QUALITY of the crab.
In a separate bowl I placed the herb mixture, mayo, red onion, panko bread crumbs, egg, greek yogurt, garlic and herb Old Bay and mixed together. I then added that mixture to the crab and gently incorporated all ingredients together. I was able to get 9 good sized crab cakes out of the mixture. If you make them bigger or smaller, you can get less or more, it just depends on your preference of size. I cooked the cakes in about ¼ inch of olive oil, and 2tbs of butter. I ended up cooking them in two batches. Browning them on both sides, I cooked them until they were slightly firm. Now all was left was to enjoy them!
I could hardly wait to taste!!! I took one bite, and man was I enjoying a wondrous joyous flavor of crab in my mouth. I didn’t use much panko in the recipe, so unlike some crab cakes out there that are mostly breading, this was all crab goodness. They were amazing and the crab was the real star. Follow this recipe to get the perfect crab cakes, and remember, good crab cakes start with GOOD CRAB. Check out Pure Food Fish Market for some amazing quality product!
- 1lb of Fresh shelled crab meat
- 1 egg
- 1 cup of panko bread crumbs
- ½ cup of plain greek yogurt
- ½ cup of light mayo
- 1tbs of garlic and herb Old Bay seasoning
- 2 sage leaves
- ½ bundle of cilantro
- 2 sprigs of rosemary
- 1 tbs of fresh thyme
- 3 basil leaves
- 1 red onion
- Olive oil
- 2 tbs of butter
- Finely chop all herbs together, and then chop the onion. Set aside.
- Preheat sauté pan to medium low heat, and put about ¼ inch of oil in pan with 2 tbs of butter and allow to heat up until you can put the end of a wooden spoon into the oil and it bubbles up around the spoon or about 350 degrees.
- Mix together herbs, mayo, yogurt, old bay and egg stirring to fully incorporate.
- Then add in crab, followed by onion, and then panko.
- Form into patties. Place into oil, I did four at a time, so I didn’t overcrowd the pan.
- Cook on both sides until brown and slightly firm.
Disclosure: Pure Food Fish Market sent us this amazing crab for free. All opinions are my own.
Nate. These look amazing. Never thought I would try to make crab cakes myself until I saw this post.
Thanks man, there were as delicious as they look!! My mouth is still watering!