In our catering days, we were known for our outstanding crab cakes. I did a post many years
ago and published our recipe which can be found in the archives or just google trishgiordano
crabcakes and it should come up.
This past holiday season I was attempting to purchase jumbo lump crabmeat which, not only
was it difficult to find but very expensive. (as in $33-$36 per lb.!!)
I also noticed that none of the stores were carrying U.S. crab.
It was from Mexico, China, Thailand, etc.
I had inadverently purchased crab from China in the past and was amazed at how different the crab
looked and tasted. Typically, crabmeat is a grey-ish color and has a pleasant sweet taste.
(which is why I never put onions in my crabcakes). The crab from China was pure white,
uniformly square in shape and, quite frankly, had not much taste at all.
I was able to located jumbo lump crabmeat by Phillips at Costco, of all places!.....however,
their label indicated that it also was from Southeast Asia. I telephoned Phillips and had
a lengthy conversation which was quite informative. While the crab is no longer harvested
from the U.S., it is under judicial supervision and regulations by the Phillips company and in
their own water pools.
My crabcakes were delicious as always but I do lament the changing of the times and our world
when I can no longer work with the wonderful products of the past.
Anyway, the intention of this post is to caution you when purchasing crabmeat. Never before have
there been so many choices and, in my opinion, none of them are worth considering.
That adage, "you get what you pay for" is, unfortunately, so very true as we all usually discover.
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