Picking your own meat for Crab Cakes

I learned how to do this from my grandmother Edna when I was a kid. It was enjoyable to sit around the table with everyone doing the same thing for the greater good—to produce crab meat for the perfect homemade crab cake.

Perhaps to someone that has never experienced picking crabs for crab cakes—this might seem odd, as in, why wouldn’t you just go buy a crab cake because it’s a lot of work to pick those crabs. But, if you have ever gathered around a table for this purpose, you know it is an experience worth having at least once.

Some of you might be wondering, how long does it take to pick a bushel of crab? In our house, as recently as last week, it takes about one hour to pick a bushel of crab between 2 to 3 people. And that’s non-stop with no breaks in-between. Just pure picking. If that seems fast, trust me, it is not. If you compare that to a professional picker at a crab house, there is no competition. The women (it’s all women so I am just telling it like it is) can pick 10 crabs in a minute! The style they use to pick crabs in a crab house is also most likely different from the method you use in your home. It is for us. Their style is all about getting the backfin, jumbo lump, and everything else is secondary. They also use a special crab knife, where at home we use our fingers. Knifes are good if you want pristine crab meat and will save your fingers, but it takes some practice.

Ok now that you have picked the bushel, how much meat can one expect? Obviously, if you are picking a bushel of larger crabs, you’ll get more meat because it is far easier to get it all out. The smaller crabs have more nooks and crannies to get into, which can make it a little bit harder. In general, a bushel picked by non-professionals will yield about 3 pounds of crab meat. A professional picker is expected to yield 14% of a steamed bushel, which weighs about 30-34 lb—so closer to 4 pounds.

So once you have your pile of crab meat, it’s time to create the crab cakes. I was always taught that less is more when it comes to crab cakes because adding too many ingredients will ultimately drown out the delicate crab flavor. This is a mistake most often done in restaurants, and the reason I think is because most restaurants use foreign crab meat, or blue swimming crab, to prepare their crab cakes. Foreign crab meat has a flatter flavor that isn’t sweet like Maryland meat—so when using Maryland crab meat for crab cakes, keep it simple: less is more.

Another note about making crab cakes is to treat the meat tenderly. You don’t want to over mix the crab meat. And for that reason, I always mix everything else together first and then fold in the crab meat last. Once the crab meat is folded in, I prefer to bake my crab cakes because I am guaranteed perfection and I can basically leave the crab cakes alone for 20 minutes in the oven until they're done. Frying crab cakes in a pan also works, but does require that you stand there the entire time and some skill is involved when flipping the crab cake (think of it like a really delicate burger.)

So to sum it all up, making homemade crab cakes from crabs you have picked is worth the experience. It’s labor-intensive and maybe something you do once a season. It’s a good practice to bring friends and family together and then the reward of eating a hot, delicious homemade crab cake together is what it’s all about.