Crab for Maryland crab cakes?

[susan_foster]

I was looking through my grocery circular this week, and noticed they had crabmeat on sale for over 1/2 off - so I thought I would finally get around to trying the Maryland Crab Cake recipe from CL Complete (I love crab cakes!). Anyway, my question is, they had 2 kinds of meat on sale (and a third that was discounted 25%), and I wanted to ask, what kind of crab meat do you use for your cakes? The kinds they had on sale were backfin and claw - offhand I would go with the claw, because it sounds better, but I thought I would ask before I go shopping on Saturday.

Susan

[Gracie]

Marylander born and bred checking in -

What kind of crabs are they? If they're just the regular small blue crabs, I would recommend backfin all the way! I would go with claw if it's king crab.

For the small blue crab, think of it as analogous to the lobster's tail vs. the lobster claw. But of course it's personal preference - when you eat lobster, which do you prefer?

Hopefully the recipe also calls for Old Bay seasoning.

Loren

[ChristineVA]

Backfin! Sometimes you get some that says "lump". That is good. Also, try not to be disappointed. It is very hard to find good blue crab anymore, especially in those grocery containers. Mostly it comes from the Phillipines now and is some other breed of crab. Personally, I can't stand it, so your crab cake may not have the taste that a proper crab cake should.
Christine (who lived in Maryland for 30 years!).

[Peggy]

I use "lump" crab meat from dungeness crab to make this recipe. But that may be a West Coast crab and you may not have that available to you.

Peggy

[purplefishy]

Often times stores sell different grades of backfin crab meat. The best, like Christine said, should be labeled "lump". It has to do with how, for a lack of a better word, broken down the meat is. The best, and of course most expensive, crab meat will look like little lumps when you open up the container -- they'll be in the same form as when they were taken out of the crab. Other backfin crab meat is probably from the same part of the crab, its just not as perfect looking -- perhaps the lump of meat got broken up while the crab was being picked or during processing. I think either grade of backfin would work great in a crab cake, it just depends on how much money you want to spend. If it were me, I would get the good stuff since it's half off. You gotta love sales :D . The mark of a good crab cake is big lumps of crab with just a little bit of binding, just enough to hold everything together. And of course, lots of Old Bay! IMHO, claw meat would be better for soups than in crab cakes -- its not as tender.

Wow, thanks Susan. Now I am really craving crab!