Rob: Hi, my name is Rob Carson, I’m a radio personality and I like to cook, and my goal with these videos is to bring friends, families, and fellow foodies into the kitchen and to demystify things you might have been afraid to try otherwise. I’ve got my buddy chef Bryan, from bryanskitchen.com. and also Chef Bryan’s Kitchen which we’re standing in right now. What do you guys do here first of all?
Bryan: This is a 1,200, 1,200 square foot cooking studio.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Where we do corporate team building, we do catering, dinner parties, public and private classes.
Rob: Alright. Cool. And today we are making.
Bryan: Crab cakes.
Rob: Crab cakes. Alright, so, what are our ingredients here today Bryan?
Bryan: Yeah, what we’re gonna start with a lump, a pound of lump crab meat, jumbo lump crab meat.
Rob: Now let me ask you, for those who don’t know where to get good lump crab meat, where you gonna get this, and is it already picked, is it already out of the shell or do you got to pick it?
Bryan: You can, there’s some it’s already picked and cleaned, there’s some that’s not.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: You can find it at most grocery stores, Sam’s club, Kosko.
Rob: Okay. Excellent. What else we got here?
Bryan: We have some chopped green onions. Some chopped parsley. Mayonnaise. Obay seasoning.
Rob: Obay.
Bryan: Dijon mustartd. Lemon juice. And this is the secret ingredient to my crab cakes which is a vidella onion vinaigrette .
Rob:Okay, but he’s not gonna tell you all the ingredients.
Bryan: That’s right. Basically, we’ll gonna need 2 bowls.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: A strainer.
Rob: Alright.
Bryan: And cups to hold your seasonings, and a sauté pan, since we’re gonna pan sear this crab cakes.
Rob: Let’s get started.
Bryan: Okay, what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna take our crab meat.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Okay. Jumbo lump we had it sitting in a strainer to drain to take all the excess moisture out of it. okay. And you can see that this crab meat is a nice big lumps of crab.
Rob: Yes it is.
Bryan: Okay. So this is gonna make it easy. What you wanna do is kinda pick through, to see if there’s any cartilage or anything, shell pieces or shell fragments.
Rob: Or pearls. Oh, that’s another, oysters. Yeah.
Bryan: Okay, but we wanna try and leave the crab in the large lumps.
Rob: Sure.
Bryan: Okay, so we just lightly pick through it, if you don’t feel anything, then we’ll ready to roll.
Rob: Then we’re golden. Right.
Bryan: Okay. So next, we’ll gonna make our sauce.
Rob: Alright.
Bryan: Okay, we’re gonna take our mayonnaise, we’re gonna take our obay, our Dijon mustard, lemon juice.
Rob: Our secret ingredient.
Bryan: And the vidella onion vinaigrette. Okay.
Rob: Yes.
Bryan: This is the binder that we’re gonna put in the crab meat.
Rob: Now, there’s 2 ways you can go with crab cakes, you can make them incredibly simple with basically a little bit of egg and some bread crumbs, you know, maybe a little salt and pepper. Or you can take it a little up a notch a little bit, like Bryan is doing today.
Bryan: Yeah.
Rob: Alright. Excellent.
Bryan: You always wanna taste…
Rob: Sure.
Bryan: The seasoning before you put it into the crab.
Rob: Sure.
Bryan: If you wanna alter it, now it’s time to do it.
Rob: Absolutely.
Bryan: Once it goes in, it’s in. Okay. So, what we’re gonna do next, I we’re gonna take our egg, and we’re gonna add the egg right to directly to the crab meat. Okay, some recipe out there, you will find add the egg to the dressing, but what I find a lot of times, depending on how much moisture is on the crab meat, you might not need all the dressing, this is gonna be by a feel type thing.
Rob: For sure.
Bryan: Okay.
Rob: You don’t want to have too much sauce in it coz they’ll fall apart and break.
Bryan: But we want the whole egg.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: So I add the egg separate, just to the crab meat and then add the sauce to it.
Rob: Cool.
Bryan: Okay. So this is why I’m a big fan of using my hands. Okay.
Rob: Go for it.
Bryan: So I get in and I get it all mix around with my hands, it just makes it a lot easier to keep…
Rob: For sure.
Bryan: To keep the lumps jumbo. Than getting in there with a spatula or a spoon. Okay, so we got that all nice and mix.
Rob: Excellent.
Bryan: Okay, so we just added the egg to the crab meat, now we’ll gonna take the sauce and we’re just gonna start slowly.
Rob: And you’ve added about half of what you have in that bowl.
Bryan: About half of what I made yet.
Rob: Okay. Alright.
Bryan: Okay. I’m just gonna mix this together.
Rob: Oh man, I can imagine this is gonna be really, really flavorful.
Bryan: And what, if you want to stretch this, one thing you can do is you can break these lumps up.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Okay. If you break the lumps up, you’re gonna be able to maybe stretch into a few…
Rob: More crab cakes.
Bryan: Few more crab cakes.
Rob: Buy more crab.
Bryan: Exactly. Okay. So that’s about where we wanna go with that.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: We don’t wanna go anymore.
Rob: Sauce. That’s about the consistency.
Bryan: Shock on that, that’s about the consistency that we want.
Rob: Coz you don’t want it runny. Yeah. Okay. Cool.
Bryan: Now we’re gonna add our bread crumbs.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Okay. At this point, this is when I start using the spatula.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Okay. So, we’re gonna take our bread crumbs, and again this is about a cup of bread crumbs.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Okay. I am not a fan of the crab cakes that resemble hush puppies or, you know, I like just enough bread crumbs to bind it, to hold it together.
Rob: You want to see the crab in the, in the finish product.
Bryan: Right.
Rob: Yeah.
Bryan: I mean, crab hush puppies have their place and crab furters have their place, but crab cakes also have their place.
Rob: That’s right.
Bryan: Okay, so we’re gonna have a little bit of the bread crumb, we’re gonna do it in a couple of different additions just so we could watch it coming together.
Rob: Now, what kind of oil are we gonna be frying this in today?
Bryan: We’re gonna be frying this in a combination of clarified butter and vegetable oil.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Okay. And little bit more bread crumb. Toss that again. That’s about where we are.
Rob: Excellent.
Bryan: Okay.
Rob: Okay, so now you’ve got all the bread crumbs you need in there, you’ve got all your ingredients, we’re ready to throw them on the stove, how big are we gonna make these things?
Bryan: Well, I like to make them, I do this a lot as appetizers.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: So I like to do them as little appetizers.
Rob: Okay, a little disc, a little bit bigger than a quarter and thick.
Bryan: Go that route, you can also go, if you wanna do, you know, for like an an tray.
Rob: Yes.
Bryan: Go 3 to 4 ounces. I wouldn’t go much bigger than 3 to 4 ounces, just because they get a lot harder to handle when you’re pan searing them.
Rob: Sure. Absolutely.
Bryan: But if you make 2, you know, 3 to 4 ounce crab, that’s a nice little.
Rob: That’s your an tray.
Bryan: You’re pushing it.
Rob: You can also serve this with the aeoli as a, an appetizer, of course.
Bryan: Appetizer. First course.
Rob: Yeah. Put it, put it on some, some nice big lettuce or something as a course.
Bryan: One of those would make a good first course.
Rob: For sure.
Bryan: Two of those makes a good an tray.
Rob: Yeah, lovely. Cool. Let’s head over the stove. Fry these things up. So we have the crab cakes browned, lightly on either side, and we’ve done that just to add color, cook them a little bit, but I’ll ensure the cooking is gonna be in the oven. Again we used the vegetable oil and clarified butter, because?
Bryan: High heat point.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: We want high heat to brown these, we don’t want the oil to be absorb in the crab cakes, we want them to sear the crab cakes.
Rob: That’s why they don’t feel deep fryers with olive oil, because it’ll catch on fire. So it has a much lower flash point. Great so we got them looking very nicely, they’re still held together, they haven’t fallen apart at all, if you kept them and cook them stove top, you’d, you’d see after a while I’m sure a little bit of flaking, stuff like that.
Bryan: No, the biggest thing with on the stove top is that they’re gonna get way too cook on the outside.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Before they’re done inside.
Rob: Alright. Cool. Well let’s head to the oven.