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Crab cakes with honey-mustard sauce

You could play the "what does it look like" game with these if there are no clouds in the sky.

For seafood recipes, I generally turn to either Emeril or Ina Garten. Ina wins this one. I use her recipe for crab cakes with very few changes: yogurt instead of mayonnaise, panko instead of bread crumbs, and I bake them instead of frying.

What I love most about this recipe is that it's about 50% vegetables. Combine that with baking them, and I'd dare say they're healthy.

Ina's recipes often specify that your ingredients should be good... like "1/2 cup good mayonnnaise." On that topic, this recipe is definitely best with good, fresh crab. But it also works with canned. If you do get canned, try to find a brand that has lumps. Trader Joe's has good, lumpy, canned crab.

And on the topic of lumpiness, there's a spectrum in crab-cake-making regarding how small you chop the vegetables. One one end is very lumpy, with all of the ingredients remaining visible, which looks and tastes great but takes some skill to get the cakes to bind together. On the other end, the ingredients are all tiny and well-combined, and it's incredibly easy to form a solid cake that will withstand flipping and serving. Choose your lumpiness level accordingly.

Pretty low on the lumpiness scale today.


The final mixture. Will taste SO much better than it looks.


These crab cakes were to be appetizers before Christmas Eve fondue at my mother-in-law's house. So, I leaned a non-dairy dipping sauce. Honey mustard was great.

Also good on ham sandwiches, rumor has it.

The Recipe:
2 tb butter
2 tb olive oil
1 red onion, minced
4 stalks celery, minced
2 red/yellow/orange bell peppers, minced
1/4 c flat-leaf parsley, minced
1 tb capers, minced
1/2 tsp hot sauce
1/2 tsp Worscestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp cajun seasoning
1/2 tsp salt (unless your cajun seasoning has salt)
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 lb crab meat
1/2 c panko bread crumbs
1/2 c plain yogurt
2 tsp dijon mustard
2 eggs, beaten
cooking spray

  • In the butter and olive oil, saute the onion, celery, bell peppers, parsley, capers, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, cajun seasoning, salt, and pepper over medium-low heat for approximately 15 minutes, until vegetables are soft.
  • Cool to room temperature
  • Add remaining ingredients and mix well
  • Refrigerate the mixture for 30 minutes
  • Prepare two baking sheets with cooking spray. Form small cakes with the batter (the smaller, the easier to flip). Spray a small amount of baking spray on top of the cakes to help them brown.
  • Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, flipping after 15.
Honey-mustard sauce:
1 part mustard
1 part honey
1 part olive oil
1/2 part cider vinegar
  • Mix all ingredients. That's it.

The Verdict:
Overall grade: A-
Overall reason: I'm a sucker for recipes that sneak so many vegetables in.
Time to prepare: 2 hours, including cooling and cooking times
Husband quote: "These are the best crab cakes you've made." (I've made the same recipe the last 4-ish times, and he says this every time.)


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