Green Chile Crab Cakes with Smoky Remoulade Sauce

I’m so excited! This is my first Secret Recipe Club (SRC) post! I have been jealously watching other food bloggers’ secret recipe club posts and just dying for my little food blog to become “old enough” to join. You have to have at least 60 posts to join the club. I guess my marathon of blogging every day in October really helped with THAT.

In case you’re not familiar with the Secret Recipe Club,  … it is a “club” of food bloggers. Each blogger in the club is secretly assigned to make a recipe from another food blog and blog about it. You are assigned to a blog, but you can make any recipe you choose from that blog. On the “reveal” day, everyone in that group publishes their Secret Recipe.

I totally lucked out and was assigned to Jessica at Kitchen Belleicious. Oh I had so much fun looking through her blog … she has so many amazing recipes. I finally narrowed it down to two recipes: I was debating between the Shrimp Stew and the Green Chile Crab Cakes and I guess you can tell which one won out. I have a great affinity for crab cakes and do not get them very often, living in the midwest.

I had not intended to tweak this recipe at all because it looked absolutely perfect to me just like it was. But life was not cooperating with me on that one … It was tough to find fresh crab meat where I live, but I was determined to make THIS recipe, so I ended up using canned crab meat (oh the shame of it!). I just discovered I didn’t check my mayo supply before I went shopping, so I totally ran out of mayo before I even started making the sauce. I also had to make up some Old Bay Seasoning because I couldn’t find any of that at the store. And then I totally forgot the celery, so I substituted red bell pepper, which I think was one of those “good” kind of accidents, because it made these little crab cakes look so festive!

Green Chile Crab Cakes with Smoky Remoulade Sauce

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces of fresh crab meat (that’s 2 cans, if you can’t find fresh like me)
• 1/3 cup chopped red onion (about 1/2 of an onion)
• 1/3 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 1/3 cup roasted, chopped Hatch green chiles
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups breadcrumbs
• 1 1/2 TBSP cup spicy brown mustard
• 1/2 cup light mayo
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp Old Bay Crab Boil Spice
• Salt & pepper to taste (I actually didn’t add any salt or pepper)
• Juice of 1 lemon

Remoulade Sauce:

• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley leaves
• 2 TBSP green onions
• 2 TBSP sweet pickles
• 1 tsp horseradish sauce
• Dash of garlic powder
• 1/4 cup greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 1/2 tsp dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp adobo seasoning
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika

Directions:

1. Combine vegetables, chiles, crab meat, and bread crumbs.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and lightly toss together being careful not to break up the crab. If you are making large cakes, you can pan fry them in vegetable oil for 3-4 minutes on each side over medium heat or you can bake smaller cakes at 400. I shaped them into about 1 inch balls, then set them on the baking sheet and flattened them a bit. She said to bake them for 8 – 10 minutes, but I found I had to bake them for about 20 minutes to get them crispy.
3. Whir together ingredients for remoulade in a handi chopper or food processor and serve alongside the crab cakes.

Copycat Old Bay Seasoning

from Robbie’s Recipes