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Mom’s Chesapeake Bay Crab Cakes

Crab cakes are best kept simple. No filler. No extra spices.

This is my mom’s recipe, which I tweaked just a bit by using panko instead of breadcrumbs.

For the crab meat, ideally we would have picked the crabs on the back porch, steamed crabs, shells and guts piled high on newspaper, the smell of Old Bay in the air, snitching a bite or two and dipping it in apple cider vinegar. But alas, I’m land-locked in Missouri, so canned crab has to do. My preference would be Byrd International, harkening back to work I did for them in the late 90s with my friend Rick Maloof, but unfortunately Super-Schnucks only had Phillips.

The ingredients:
1 lb lump blue crab
1 beaten egg
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire
little bit of salt and pepper
panko
oil

Beat the egg. Stir in the mayo, mustard and Worcestershire. Add the crab, fold it in and stir it together. Add a little salt and pepper. Taste it and tweak the seasoning if you desire — but make sure it still tastes like crab! Make some patties, like small hamburgers, and coat them in panko. Heat the oil in a frying pan to medium heat and drop in some panko to gauge the temperature. When the panko sizzles, add the crab cakes and fry them, browning them on each side, maybe as much as 5 minutes depending on the temperature of the oil. Set them on a paper towel to drain the excess oil. Serve them as part of a meal with a vegetable, but don’t add a sauce or a garnish to the crab cakes themselves. They’re fine on their own!

© 2009 Nathan Verrill.