Speaker: The following recipe is designed for people that come home after work and are looking for a quick snack. These are really, really simple, little zesty crab-cakes and they will be ready in minutes. When you are making these crab-cakes, there are three different types of crab meat that you can use. The first one is tin crab meat, we are not going to use that today. But that's what I mean about the quick and easy snack, you might have a little tin of crab meat in your larder and you can use that straight away. The second type of crab that was probably the most exciting that we have got, it's a whole crab and we've called him George and you can see that he is still alive, he came in this morning. But we are not going to use him today, he is going to live to see another day.
Now, the best type of crab to use and probably the easiest for yourself at home, is pasteurized crab. Now this has come out of the freezer, it's been out for about six hours, we have let it defrost and it's basically the same crab meat that you would have seen inside George. So what we need first is a nice bowl to mix them in. Now this whole process shouldn't take more than three or four minutes to actually make them. It will be very, very simple and very, very quick and you can see the two different types of crab meat there, you have your white crab meat and your brown. Now there is a few different flavorings that I want to add. First of all we have some nice, cream chopped chives, that will give it that little subtle tint of onion and some beautiful color when you cut into.
I have some chopped thyme leaves, most of them to go with some beautiful fresh parsley, a couple of teaspoons of mayonnaise and what that mayonnaise does, is that brings the whole mixture together and it is going to act like a sort of glue to just bind it altogether. So one more thing to go in there, which is my lovely diced red onion, and you can see, you have got those lovely contrasts in the colors. You are going to have a couple of nice textures there, punch of your onion, your beautiful soft crab meat and those nice herbs to perfume the whole thing. So the next thing we want to add is our breadcrumbs.
Now if I take you over to the oven here, in there you will see, I have just sliced up some very simple white breads and I have left that in a low oven for about one hour just to dry out. Now what you do whenever it comes out of oven, if you put it in the food processor or a blender, and you will get beautiful fresh bread crumbs. No point buying them in the shops, these will be much nicer. So they go into the crab mix as well, along with the mayonnaise, they are going to help to give the cakes that body and really turn them into something that we can actually cook with. So the next thing that we want to add, and this is just to give it a little tiny kick, is a couple of dash of Tabasco, so I am just going to give a little squeeze of lemon juice, which will complement the flavor fantastically of these crab cakes.
We just need to season them with some nice fresh salt and pepper, and you can see this whole process has taken less than five minutes to do. So we are ready to start cooking them now and you are not far away from having those great crab cakes. So now what we have to do with this mixture, is quickly shape them before they go into the pan. This part is really up to you, what size you go for. I am going to make two fairly small ones proportion. So just to make sure your hands are obviously nice and clean. I will just shape them like that, there is one, we will do exactly the same with the other thing.
So what I have over here, is I have a pan, that's been heating up for about 45 seconds, we are going to place a little bit of olive oil in there, just enough to cook the bottom of the pan. I want to use a nice spatula. We will just place that first crab cake in there and you can hear that sizzle, that's exactly the noise we are looking for. 45 seconds of cook on each side. So you can see how quickly these are starting to take on it, just place your hand on the top and carefully flip it over and look at that lovely golden brown color. That's exactly what we are looking for.
Now these are going to take another 45 seconds in there, and the beauty of that crab meat that we are using, is that it's all already cooked. So you don't have to worry about cooking the fish through or anything. Just process, so that basically you can warm it all up and you are going to have that great snack ready so soon.
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