Cracking The Crab Cake Code

One weird trick to transform your relationship with tinned seafood

First, before we get to the lovely, crusty, fluffy, deeply savory crab cake you see up top I need to crow about this salad. Every leaf on that plate came from my garden, which was completely covered in snow just a few days ago. This recent warm spell has sent most of the snow packing, and the hardy greens (in this case spinach, radicchio, celery, mâche, and parsley) are all still alive and positively lapidary in both color and sheen. It’s hard to overstate how glad this makes me, and how the sun, longer days, and appearance of food outside my door have bolstered my beleaguered optimism. A garden is a panacea.

This post could easily fit into the Pantry Raid category because it makes use of canned crab and jarred/bottled condiments, but it also overlaps neatly with my less official “cracking the code” series, where I break down the workings of a dish so you can make substitutions and apply the principles to other dishes when the opportunity or necessity arises. Beyond yielding exceptionally flavorful (and very easy) crab cakes, my formula will show you how to turn just about any tinned fish into sublime croquettes. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that if you’re a tinned fish fan this is a big deal.

I have a couple of nifty ideas to write up that show how this approach can be deployed to incredible effect, but for now let’s dig into this game-changing concept. Join me as I disrupt the crab cake space!