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These are perfect for the holiday season entertaining. Serve as a first course, or as finger food while your guests are enjoying their cocktails. Perfect with a nice glass of champagne.
serves: 4-8 difficulty: medium prep time: 45 min
Ingredients
- 1 lbs cooked crabmeat
- 2 shallots
- 1 red serrano chili
- 1 green onion
- 1 red, yellow or orange bell pepper
- 3 tbs fresh cilantro
- 1tbs. fish sauce
- 1 tsp ground pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tbs panko or fine dried white bread crumbs, or as needed, plus 1 cup for coating
- corn or vegetable oil for frying
Preparation
Place shallots, red serrano chili, green onion, bell pepper, cilantro, fish sauce, black pepper, salt, sugar and egg in a food processor, and process until all ingredients are chopped and mixed.
Add 2 tsp panko bread crumbs to the mixture to thicken it. Panko bread crumbs are a Japanese ingredient used in tempura. You can find it in many good grocery stores or in Asian groceries. If it still feels too runny, add some more bread crumbs but don’t overdo it because you want your crab cakes to taste of crab and not bread.
Then add the crab meat to the mixture and mix well. The resulting mixture should look something like the below.
Place the 1 cup panko bread crumbs in a shallow dish. Scoop up 1/3 cup crab mixture and form it into a cake 2 inches in diameter and 3/4 inch thick. Dip each crab cake into the panko, pressing it into the crumbs and turning to coat both sides. You should have 8 cakes. Loosely cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
In a large fry pan over medium-high heat, pour oil to a depth of 1/2 inch and heat until you can see the oil moving in the pan, or to 360°F on if you have a thermometer. Add the crab cakes without crowding them in the pan and fry, turning once, until crisp and golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes on each side. Using a slotted spatula, transfer to paper towels to drain.
Some more “behind the scenes”!
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