Welcome to Chris’ Crab House. My virtual seafood restaurant on the road. Let me tell you a little about it. I love to cook. I do most or all of it for Gram Weenie and I. My favorite food is seafood, more specifically, snow crab, but crab of all kinds. In 4th grade I was tasked with a project to make a restaurant idea. Chris’ Crab House was the name of it. I drew the artwork for what the exterior of the building would look like and I placed the menu inside of a clear protective report cover. My Mom helped me come up with the menu items and price them out appropriately at that time. I’m pretty sure she still has it somewhere. I always bring that story up whenever I make seafood dishes. So, I decided to list them here on a page for you to try. These recipes aren’t always easy or fast, they are meant to be good. I always try to catch my own fish, but if you don’t have easy access, I’m also offering a good place to get crabs, lobster, shrimp, and fish for these recipes.
Chris’ Crab House Menu
Breakfast
Crabcake Benedict
1 or 2 crabcakes
English muffin
4 bacon slices
Sliced cheese
4 eggs
3 T butter
Lemon juice
Old Bay seasoning
See our simple crab cake recipe below. Begin by pan frying in butter the 2 halves of the English muffins. While that is going on, get a pot of water to poach the eggs in. The easiest way I’ve found is to use a small baggy or saran wrap. Put the plastic in a small bowl, spray with cooking spray, break the egg into it and tie it off with no air in it. Heat up a pot of water until simmering. Don’t boil. Stir the water gently and place each bag with egg into the water. Simmer for 4-5 mins. At the same time, microwave 4 slices of bacon until crisp.
To make a simple hollandaise, beat 2 egg yolks, lemon juice, salt together in a bowl until smooth. Slowly stream melted butter into the egg yolk mixture while whisking to incorporate being careful not to cook the egg with hot butter. Microwave for 15 to 20 seconds and whisk again.
To assemble, put the English muffin halves down, place the bacon slices on top, cheese on top of bacon, crab cake on top of cheese, poached egg on top of crab cake, cover with hollandaise and sprinkle Old Bay on hollandaise to garnish.
Appetizers
Sweet Corn Hushpuppies
2 T sugar
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
Mix corn muffin mix, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, sugar, black pepper, and cayenne pepper in a bowl until blended. Stir eggs and evaporated milk into dry ingredients until moistened. Stir cream-style corn into mixture to make a moist batter. Let batter stand while oil heats. Heat oil in a deep-fryer or large saucepan to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Gently drop a teaspoon of batter at a time into the hot oil, staying as close to the oil as possible to avoid splattering. Fry hush puppies until golden brown, about 3 minutes per batch. Remove hush puppies with a slotted spoon and place on a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Sprinkle with salt if desired.
Crab Bisque
1/4 chopped sweet onion
2-3 chopped garlic cloves
3 T salted butter
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 cups seafood stock
2 oz. dry white wine
4 oz. Tomato paste
2 oz. crab juice from container
1.5 cups heavy cream
1/2 lbs. crab meat of your choice
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 loaf crusty French baguette
This is the best soup I’ve ever made. In a large pot, melt 3 T butter and cook the chopped sweet onion for several minutes to caramelize and become translucent. Put chopped garlic in at this point and cook until tender careful not to burn. Add 2 cups of seafood stock and simmer for a minute or two. Add the contents to a food processor or blender and blend until mostly smooth. Return to the pot. Measure out 2 oz. each of white wine and the liquid from the crab container in a measuring cup. Add white wine, crab juice, tomato paste, and heavy cream to the pot. Let simmer for 5 mins or longer if you need to thicken it. Lastly, add the crab meat of your choice to warm for several mins and taste before serving. The sweetness from the onion and the crab (and crab juice) should be excellent and you’ll want it to be fairly salty. The dry white wine and smoothness of the cream will make it hit every taste bud you have. This should be just like restaurant quality. You can add in additional shrimp or lobster pieces if you like. Garnish it with chopped parsley or cilantro or a dollop of additional cream and/or lumps of crab in the center. Use the bread for dipping.
Candied Crabby Bacon
This Candied Bacon may be the best thing you’ve ever eaten. It’s easy to make. Simply mix together a “dry rub” of 1 cup brown sugar, 2 T Old Bay Seasoning, and 1 T Smoked Paprika. Place in a gallon zip lock bag. Add 4 pieces of thick cut bacon and shake to thoroughly coat. Place bacon slices flat on a broiler pan and bake in the oven at 400 until cooked through. It likely won’t get as crispy as usual, but that’s ok, the result is phenomenal.
Oysters Raw
Order them in the shell raw here in the quantity you want.
Seafood Fondue
1 cup Velveeta cheese, cubed
1 cup swiss cheese, grated
2 T butter
1 (10 1/2 ounce) can Campbell’s cream of shrimp soup
1 cup milk
1⁄2 tsp cayenne
1⁄2 tsp smoked paprika
1 boiled lobster tail
Cooked shrimp
Cooked crawfish
1 Sour dough crusty bread bowl
1 diced roasted red pepper (optional)
Boil shrimp, lobster, and crawfish in a pot for 5 mins. Remove from water and set aside. Combine everything but the lobster tail, shrimp, crawfish, and bread in a medium saucepan and heat over low heat until melted. Stir occasionally. When melted, stir in the lobster meat or shrimp meat. Pull out the inner portion of a sour dough loaf of bread. Save the bread pieces for dipping. Place the cheese/seafood mixture into the bread bowl. Garnish with red pepper if desired and serve with the bread.
Dinner
Crab Cakes
Crab meat variety
1 egg white
Salted butter
Old Bay seasoning
I like to use a mixture of crab meat, not just backfin and not just claw, but some of it all. That gives you a better chance to get different textures and sweetness of the crab meat. Here’s the secret to the way I like crab cakes. I like the advice of the chef, Robert Irvine. “Crab, the less you do to it, the better it tastes.” That’s worth repeating. Do less, not more. Let it speak for itself. Take a mixture of your crab meat and mix in a slight amount of Old Bay seasoning and just enough egg white to hold it together and bind. Don’t stir it, fold it in so as not to break up the large chunks of meat. Your hands may be the best tool for this job. That’s it. Scoop up a handful and make a crab snowball and pan fry it in salted butter for about 4 mins a side until golden brown. Be careful when flipping. I use a metal spatula on a large griddle pan so I have plenty of room to work with and can gently turn it over without breaking it up. From there, you can serve how you like, but I think they are excellent as is with a bread or starch like hush puppies. It’s really like somebody picked a mountain of meat for you, warmed it up with butter, and gave it a little crispy exterior for you to eat without having to pick through the shells yourself. I really don’t like them any other way. To me, if it needs stronger things like mustard, etc., it’s not going to be very good and will cover up something delicate that already tastes great on its own. You’ll find them made this same way in our Crab Cake Benedict recipe. I often make the crab cakes for dinner at night and use the left over for the Benedict in the morning.
Snapper (Fish) Tacos
Small 3-4 oz snapper fillets
Salted butter
Lettuce
Red onion diced
Radiccho
Sliced avocado
Mango
Tomatoes
Limes
Shredded cheddar cheese
Flour tortillas (substitute corn if you prefer)
Mexican sour cream or crema sauce
There isn’t much cooking to do in this recipe, but rather a lot of cutting and assembling. You can take the work out of it for yourself if you set up the ingredients and let those you’re serving assemble their own tacos. I modified this recipe after the awesome fish tacos we had from a food truck in Key West. There’s a little bit of everything in each bite, creamy, fishy, crunchy, citrus-sour. Snapper is an excellent fish by itself. To cook the fillets, pan fry them in 1 T of butter seasoned with salt and pepper to taste on each side. Cook on medium heat a few minutes per side until fish flakes. Place the fillets in the tortillas and pile on all the other ingredients you wish. If you prefer the fish fillets breaded and fried crunchy, you can coat them in a fish fry breading and pan fry in enough vegetable oil to just mostly cover them. Get fresh red snapper fillets here.
Snow Crab Legs
Order them by the size and number of pounds you like here. At least 1 lbs. or 2 clusters can make a meal for 1 person. I like to re-steam these in a steamer pot for 5 mins to warm them up. Serve them with melted salted butter.
King Crab Legs
Order them by the size and number of pounds you like here. At least 1 lbs. or 2 clusters can make a meal for 1 person. I like to re-steam these in a steamer pot for 5 mins to warm them up. Serve them with melted salted butter.
Crawfish/Shrimp Boil
Shrimp
Small potatoes whole
Tomatoes quartered or whole
Limes wedged
Onions large slices
Garlic cloves whole
Corn on cobb in small sections (we used it sliced off the cobb how Rachel likes it)
Light beer
Sea or kosher salt
Water
Old Bay Seasoning
The crawfish and shrimp boil is easy. Take all of the ingredients except the shellfish and place on the strainer of a steamer pot. We have a small one I use in our RV that stores well and makes enough for 2. Place a mixture of light beer and water into the bottom of the pot about 1/3-1/2 of the way up. I say a steamer pot, but I do want it to boil up and cover the contents of the strainer/steamer basket. In this case, it’s really more “boiling” than “steaming”, but you could use it for either. It all depends how much liquid you have in the bottom. Add a hefty load of Old Bay. More than you think you need. The boiling will wash it off the surface of the food, but you want it to mix with the liquid. Boil the contents minus the shellfish for 10 mins or until the densest veggies are cooked through. Add more seasoning to the shellfish and put in to the boil last for a final 5 mins. I prefer to keep the shells on and peel later. But, it’s your choice. Make sure there is still enough liquid to cover everything when boiling. You can cover with the lid to help cook, but just keep an eye on it so it doesn’t boil over. When done, dump the whole thing out on the table or in a bowl to be less messy. You can eat it with your hands or utensils. You decide.
Lobster
Order them by the size and number of pounds you like here. Lobster tails or live lobsters available. I like to steam or boil these in saltwater in a steamer pot. 2 mins per oz of meat. Serve them with melted salted butter.
Thai Coconut Curry
Stir Fry Rice noodles
2 cups Seafood stock
1/2 can of Coconut cream
Yellow Curry to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
2 T Salted butter
1 T Sesame oil
1 T Smoked paprika
1 T Ground ginger
1 Sweet Onion diced
4 Cloves Garlic minced
Mushrooms sliced
Carrots
Tomatoes
Cilantro
Half a lime juiced
1 Lemon cut into 4 wedges
8 oz. peeled shrimp
Optional: Chopped lettuce, kale, or radicchio added at the end for a little more crunch.
You can vary this recipe as you like to be more soupy or less depending on how much of the liquid ingredients you choose to use. Begin by dicing and cooking down the sweet onion in butter and sesame oil until translucent. Save a few strips of raw onion to add to the end if you prefer the texture and taste of them in the soup. Add salt and pepper along with minced garlic. Cook garlic down for a few minutes. Add in seafood stock. Add all other spices, carrots, mushrooms, some cilantro, and lime juice. Let that simmer for a few minutes. Towards the end, add in the tomatoes and carefully add in the coconut cream while liquid is NOT boiling. In a separate pot, bring 4 cups water to a boil. Add in your stir fry rice noodles. Turn off heat and let stand for 10 mins. Time this step to coincide with your 10 mins or so of simmering so the noodles will be ready when you’re ready to add the shrimp. Drain and add noodles to other ingredients. Bring back up to a low simmer and add in shrimp to simmer covered for 5 minutes. Garnish it with the lemon wedges and any left over cilantro or other colorful veggies.
Softshell Sandwich
1 large soft dough bun cut in half
1 soft shell crab
2 cloves garlic minced
4 T salted butter
2 T dry white wine
Old Bay seasoning to taste
The thing I like about softshell crabs is you get all of the crab flavor in a big bite each time. No work picking them apart for small pieces, although that’s good too. And 1 softshell can often make a meal whereas that’s not the case with hard crabs. Begin by pan frying the halves of the soft dough bun in butter until it starts to brown and become crispy on the edges. 1 T of butter for each half. Next, you’ll want to season the crab with Old Bay to taste. Cook the softshell a few mins per side, in the butter, garlic, and white wine, until it slightly turns redder in color and becomes a little crispy. Place straight on the bun and serve.
You can purchase all of the crab and fish in these recipes by clicking here.
