Crab Cakes Recipe: 4 Tips for Making Crab Cakes

Crab cakes are a type of fish cake—traditionally made of jumbo lump crabmeat—that can serve as a main course or appetizers in smaller portions. In addition to crabmeat, ingredients might include breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, and seasonings. After forming the ingredients into patties, you can sauté, bake, deep-fry, or broil the crab cakes.

In the United States, crab cakes are a local staple in Maryland, especially Baltimore, and other areas along the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland-style crab cakes use blue crab (abundant in the bay in that area) and very little filler so that the focus remains on the crabmeat. Other styles include Cajun-style crab cakes, which use a Cajun seasoning instead of a classic seafood seasoning and often contain peppers and onions.

Crab cakes can be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be, but there are a few choices you can make and actions you can take to ensure the best results possible. Here are a few tips for preparing crab cakes:

1. 1. Choose the right crabmeat. Use the best quality of crabmeat you can find, like fresh lump crabmeat from blue crabs or Dungeness crab, but other crabmeat might also work. You may opt for canned crabmeat and imitation crab, but the flavor will not be the same compared to fresh crabmeat.
2. 2. Focus on the crab, not the filler. Some crab cakes have more filler—like onions, red pepper, bread crumbs, and mayonnaise—than they do crabmeat. But most crab cakes highlight the crabmeat, especially if the meat comes directly from a reputable fishmonger. A little filler adds flavor, but too much can overpower the dish.
3. 3. Taste for seasoning often. Crabmeat is delicate, so it can be easy to over-season, especially with salt. Before adding a binder like an egg, taste for seasoning with each addition of an ingredient to ensure the seasoning is right and then adjust accordingly. Alternatively, cook off a little bit of the crab mixture and taste for seasoning that way.
4. 4. Use alternatives to breadcrumbs. If there are too many breadcrumbs in the mixture, it has the potential to dry out a crab cake. The purpose of breadcrumbs is to be a binding agent and hold the crab cake together—not to add flavor—so you can experiment with alternatives, such as panko, saltine crackers, or other crushed, buttery cracker crumbs.

Eat crab cakes on their own or with a sauce of some kind. The sauce of choice depends on the region and personal taste, but there are a few popular sauce options for crab cakes.

1. 1. Cocktail sauce: You usually serve this tomato-based sauce with seafood dishes like shrimp cocktail, raw oysters, or fried shrimp. The contrast of flavors in cocktail sauce (horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice) pair well with crab cakes without overpowering the flavor of the crab cake.
2. 2. Remoulade sauce: A traditional remoulade sauce has hard-boiled egg yolks, oil vinegar, capers, and other flavorings. It’s sort of a mayonnaise with hard-boiled egg yolk instead of raw egg yolk. However, a modern remoulade uses a mayonnaise base with added flavorings, like Dijon mustard and Creole or Cajun seasoning.
3. 3. Tartar sauce: The most classic sauce pairing for crab cakes, tartar sauce has a mayonnaise base with relish or chopped pickles, lemon juice, fresh herbs like dill or parsley, salt, and pepper. Sometimes it might also include hot sauce as an ingredient.