CrabbingInTheHood.com

Okay, so I recently spent a few days down in California at my Dad’s place in San Luis Obispo. He had just recently undergone open heart surgery, and wanted me to play ‘Top Chef’ during his convalescent period.

Since he’s a lover of Pacific NW seafood, I brought a few tasty ingredients with me on the plane – frozen cracked crab meat from Hood Canal, some of my homemade smoked salmon, and some frozen Razor Clams that we dug up early last Spring.

I had perfected my own personal recipe for Dungeness Crab Pot Pies a few weeks earlier, so I thought I would try them out on him. Here’s the recipe:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

1 lb. of Dungeness Crab Meat (or more if you’re a crabaholic like me!)

1 – 16oz. jar of creamy Alfredo sauce

1 cup of frozen fresh green peas

1 cup of baby carrots sliced

1 cup of sliced fresh mushrooms

1/4 cup of diced Walla Walla Sweet Onion

2 cloves of fresh garlic finely diced

1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

1 package of pie crusts (usually comes in a 15oz. box w/ 2 rolled 9-in. crusts)

6 – 4in. diameter poreclin Ramekins

Combine all ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Roll out pie crust and use a ramekin to cut-out 6 pie tops. Puncture pie tops several times with fork. Spoon mixture liberally into each ramekin. Cover ramekins with pie tops. Place on cookie sheet and place into oven. Cook for 25-30 minutes.

Goes exceptionally well with a tossed Romaine salad, Sour Dough French Bread, and a glass of Pinot Grigio.

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, SOUNDBITEBLOG, ActiveRain, Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

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Opinions on how to properly cook/boil/steam your freshly caught Hood Canal WA Dungeness crab can vary greatly among local yokels.

Many hardcore traditionalists insist on using some kind of crab boil spices like you would find offered by companies like Zatarains.

Some people insist on boiling/steaming the entire crab, relishing the prized ‘butter’ that collects on the outer edges of the inner body shell.

Personally, my preference is to clean the crabs while we’re still out on the water. A quick axe chop to the center of the underbody kills the crabs instantly. Each side is then easily peeled out of the body shell and cleaned.  We put the cleaned sides into a 5 gallon bucket filled with saltwater from Hood Canal. The bodies are retained until we get back into port, in the event that local Fish & Wildlife officers are lingering around, checking to see that everyone is following the rules.

Depending on the extent of our good fortune that day, we boil our bounty using the large aluminum pot and propane burner, using the saltwater we brought back with us from the Hood Canal. Cooking up just the cleaned ’sides’ allows you to cook more crab and eliminate loads of messy clean-up that result if you cook the crabs whole. We don’t add any spices into the water, preferring the natural flavor that boiling in the saltwater provides.

There is much debate over the actual time you should cook/boil your crab. We prefer to bring the water to a boil, drop in the crab half sides, bring them back to boil, drop the flame slightly, and cook for 10 minutes.

Once the crab is cooked, we dump them into a large bowl and cover with ice.

Some people use various untensils like crackers, mallets, or seafood forks, and dip their cooked crab into melted butter or cocktail sauce.

I just don’t have the time or the patience. I crack the crab legs with my teeth and simply pork out to my stomach’s content!

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com and SOUNDBITEBLOG, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

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One of my favorite native, locally-harvested epicurean delights here on the Kitsap Peninsula is Dungeness crab. During the off-season, we normally draw from our stockpile of frozen ‘Seal-A-Meal’ bags, and use cracked crab meat in various recipes.

One of the better recipes we’ve come across is one for Dungeness Crab Cakes. What makes this recipe so delicious is that the cakes comes out so moist!

Ingredients:
1 pound of Dungeness crab meat
2 heaping tablespoons mayonnaise
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 small onion, grated
1/2 tablespoon mustard powder
18 Ritz crackers, crumbled

Directions:

Combine all ingredients except the crackers. Add crackers crumbs in as close to sautéing as possible so that they crab cakes don’t get too moist from the other ingredients. Form into patties the size of small hamburger patties.

Sauté in a frying pan over medium-to-high heat in butter, 10 minutes per side. Make sure that it’s crispy outside but moist and juicy inside.

A simple tartar sauce to accompany the crab cakes can be made by mixing mayonnaise, grated onion and lemon juice, or ketchup mixed with horseradish.

Serves/makes 6. Enjoy!

Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing empowerment and relentless representation of clients throughout Kitsap County WA, and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsaapLife.com and SoundBiteBlog.

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Welcome to “Crabbing In The Hood” (the Hood Canal, of course).

Soon this site will be loaded up with interesting and entertaining articles about Rich’s adventures stalking his wily prey, the Dungeness Crab.

Rich Jacobson, the website owner, is an avid Kitsap County crabber with many a tale about his times on the salty brine as well as a collector of Pacific Northwest recipes for cooking the delectable morsels he so patiently traps.

CrabbingInTheHood.com is still in the process of being set up so come back soon. This site will feature articles about local crabbing, crab recipes and crabbing gear recommendations for the novice crabber as well as the experienced crabber.

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