How to Make Soft Shell Crab

Chef Shawn Bell Soft Shell Crab with Mustard Seed Lemon Butter Sauce, accompanied with Chipotle Mashed Potatoes Okay, alright so the next thing we’re going to be working on here is we’re going to do the soft shell crabs we’re going to start with a mustard lemon butter sauce or beurre blanc to start first we get that set up aside and then we’ll go fry the crabs and then do a chapulte mashed potato to accompany that with a nice little finish surrounding that dish to. So we’re going to start with is our beurre blanc is a white wine reduction so we’re going to have white wine, some shallots and you want to pinch it with a little bit of heavy cream and butter and we’re going to finish it with some stone ground mustard. We might just round it out butter sauce on ground— teaspoon. Chipotle chili with Adobo, oh yeah we were just talking about that how wonderful that is. Yeah, I did like the nice sweet potato mash with a little bit of maple syrup a little chipotle in there or bacon butter, exactly. So you can take your shallots and sweat these shallots out a little bit, it helps sweeten them up to change the start is over and this is just little simple cooking white wine, Chablis or chardonnay and expensive, you are just going to cook that down, you want to cook off, you are going to cook off the alcohol first and then we’ll reduce down the liquid by about two thirds. Look at this set up there. Some shows that how we buy them coming in here you can also find at your local store also as they come into as they come undressed or alive and we did is when they come in live they’ll packed on straw, packed over the top here just like this and then they’ll sleep on you also. The mortally of these guys are in there very vulnerable state at this point. The soft shell crab will go through about five molting cycles before it gets it full grown about 8 inches long and so that— so you can by them in different range is also as you can buy them in small medium and jumbos and whales and different sizing. When your buying them live a lot of times in transport they’ll die which is fine because their very vulnerable at this point basically as the crab grows it pushes up at shell and then it spends a couple of weeks only within like two weeks in a soft shelled or leathery back kind of feel to it here, okay. And this is one of the only crabs that are edible at this point. All crabs with this process are very few you can eat at this stage. So that they pull them out of the water and harvest them and pull them on straw and ship them right direct to you and then only to clean them from there. Okay, so our shallots in white wine starting to reduce down and go down just a little bit more and then when I add a little. This is a 40% heavy whipping cream— whipped cream. This is pretty good right here. This is almost going to point, which is called a sac which is going to be in here. We reduce so much all of the moisture I got out here. I’m going to add some heavy cream at this point when the alcohol is cooked off it won’t separate as easy being an acid and then having a cream if you were just to add it in straight cold with raw wine, the acid will start curdling, the cream. And now we’ve cooked the alcohol out, the alcohol is bursting to evaporate to about 170 degrees before the water starts to boil out. We’re going to add this cream in and this is basically going to be our binder for us it’s going to be— and holds all together. We’re going to bring this up to a first big boil when you’re striking large bubbles. Okay so this is the point where I’m getting to, here we’re getting the bubbles just starting to get larger reducing that cream down a little bit tightening it up and then we are going to add in whole butter. At this point I’m going to shut this down to a really low flame and I’m going start to put it all the butter into this and this seems like a lot of butter as we keep adding this but that this is the base and the amount you actually you put in plate is less than an ounce so it’s pretty light overall. I guess I want to put in about an ounce at a time which is about a size of walnut. Potato? Oh more butter, I just put in some more butter, so we’re going to finish about three ounces of butter here for the sauce here as our base as it starts to get creamier. Alright this is finishing up and we are going to add in our flavor that we like to use. And for this, for the mustard sauces and go really well with this fired soft shells and so we want to do that for you today and with the little seeds in there it kind of looks nice and that was jus about an ounce of stone ground mustard. This sauce can be strained also but I think the shallots have value also in there so keep in you know. Alright we’re jus going to hold this off to the side here you know that is prepared and when I prepare the soft shells you guys are fishermen and fisher ladies hopefully so not as creamy. But we have to do if we are going to do if we are going to buy these most of the time you will buy them pretty dressed and clea, but I wanted to show you from a fresh state McCormick— as we run 28 to 32 fresh species of fish everyday and they change we have to go through about 200 species a year. So that’s why really just promote the freshest is what’s in season right now. Underneath the helmet here are the lungs of the soft shell. These will just remove by just simply pulling these off and then on the front here we’re just going to take off that nice little smile. And then on the back side you will pull of his tail. Okay, and this will be fully dressed now and ready to go soft shell crab. So we’re going to just like this, simple. Yeah this is very— on the East Coast very pedestrian style food, very simple, sometimes it’s best to keep just as simple. You know a little lemon a little tartar and that’s there you go. We’re doing some a little bit fun stuff here now in Vegas so we’re going add, we’re just going to spin the mash potatoes by making the chipotle mash potatoes. We finish the sauce a little bit presentation obviously. Okay so these two put these aside. Make sure our oil is getting hot. Okay, now on our soft shells, we’ve cleaned those, these are ready. We’re just going to do a simple three part breading and this just add a flour, then we may add little bit of corn starch a little bit of salt and pepper too, okay. Very simple, we’re going to set these guys in here and just dredge them through, all stuff that you have in the house. Okay, and from here the second stage of a breading, this is butter milk right here we are just going dredge them for the butter milk the flour will have the milk sticks through flour and then now we have a glue for the Japanese bread crumbs or rice flour. Nice consistence style bread crumb, you can definitely make your own because you’re just very simple and consistent. Just like that. Alright and then we’re going to add these guys and— take the bubble right off the back there and you just want yourself next to these two because sometimes will want to pop on you’re a little bit but what a treat these are. Alright we’re going to cook these probably about a minute and half on each side and make sure they cook through looking for a nice golden brown color, you know a nice dried color on that. Fantastic, okay with our mash potatoes very simple we can cover regular mash potatoes that we all make with our butter and our cream and then potatoes and we’re going to mix those just changing it up a little bit so just having the same mash potatoes all the time with gravy or however you like to have them. We just want to make the mash potatoes themselves, you know, okay by adding new flavor. So with that this just are chipotle peppers, this is a smoked jalapeno and a tomato Adobo sauce. Some grated fresh pecorino romano, parmesan cheese and then a little of this rough cut fresh parsley and finish it off. Alright soft shells. It’s our mash potatoes. This is or regular mash potatoes here and another spoon and I would like to crush up these a little bit. You don’t really want to have the skins in there as much kind of really just going to get the sauce back out, the seeds to you know are the hottest part in that so we’re going to add a little bit of seeds. Yeah. Parsley, a little cheese. Just as simple guys, easy. Excellent, we’re just going to let those set for a minute, absorb this on the oil and move on here just setting this up for you. I grilled off the tomatoes, spring and starting to push getting out on that barbecue a little bit more. Grilled vegetables are the best. That’s a little nice red color, so a few things in the presentation that we want to be working on always is the rule of thumb of chefs when we’re cooking is in presentation one is different colors, different flavors, different height, different shapes and then we also look for a positive negative space in the plate. We always eat with our eyes before we eat with our mouths and so just having it look visually really tasty is really what we’re looking for. So we found that if you leave about 40% of the place it was just straight plate it has a nice balance to it 60% of food 40% of negative space on the plate and look for height color and textures and flavors shapes. Okay, I’m actually going to just pick these guys up. There’s a full meal deal just like that. Sure that’s right, exactly and we’ll garnish it up with a little bit of our sauce. We’re going to finish with a little bit of lemon, a little bit of parsley. A little bit of sauce down. White wine or lemon butter or beurre blanc, yeah, put on the top like that. Really kind of take it up chef see me like want to keep getting higher and taller and taller each time all right that’s good just like that. Fried Maryland Soft Shell Crabs with Chipotle Mashed Potatoes and whole grain mustard seed sauce just that quick and easy.