Crab Salad with Citrus & Fennel

Crab Salad with Citrus & Fennel

By Ari Laing | IG: @wellseasonedstudio
Food Photographer & Stylist, Recipe Developer

This light, refreshing Crab Salad Recipe features real crab meat, hand-picked from sustainably caught Blue Swimming crabs. It’s served over a bed of frisée lettuce with baby arugula, orange segments, fresh fennel, and an orange citrus vinaigrette.

Crab is one of our favorite proteins of all time, and while we love it in any form (crab cake benedict, anyone?), it is unquestionably the star of the show here. The freshly picked crab meat has a sweet, clean, buttery flavor (highlighted by the sweetness of orange segments) and delicate, flaky texture.

This salad makes for an elegant appetizer or lunch and will fill you up without weighing you down!

Ingredients For Crab Salad

We’re using a mix of frisée lettuce and baby arugula (or arugula microgreens, if you can get your hands on them!) as the base of the crab salad recipe.

Top the lettuce with orange segments, thinly sliced fennel, sustainable, high quality Jumbo Lump crab meat, and fresh herbs (fresh dill and chives or green onions) for garnish. The crab salad is drizzled with an orange citrus vinaigrette then served with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt.

You will be so impressed by the flavor! When you use high quality ingredients, the taste shines through.

If you’re looking for a crab salad recipe featuring surimi (imitation crab meat), be sure to check out our spicy kani salad recipe! Perfect with ahi tuna poke bowls or alongside spicy tuna crispy rice!

Homemade Citrus Dressing

For this simple citrus vinaigrette, you’ll need extra virgin olive oil, fresh orange juice, fresh lemon juice, Dijon mustard, thinly sliced chives, Kosher salt, and freshly ground black pepper.​

Place everything in a measuring cup or a mason jar with a tight lid, then either stir well or shake until emulsified. This will keep in a refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. If it solidifies, just let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes or so to liquify again.

How To Make Crab Salad

There’s a couple things to know before working with these ingredients that will help make salad prep a breeze!

1. What is frisée and how do I clean it? If you’ve never worked with frisée lettuce before, you’re in for a treat! Wash then dry the frisée before beginning. Trim and discard the root end of the lettuce, then simply use your hands to pull apart and separate the lettuce leaves into smaller, bite size pieces.
2. How to segment an orange: for this crab salad recipe, you’ll LOVE the addition of sweet orange segments. We allot 1 orange for every 2 guests, but there is no shame in upping that number! Cut off a tiny bit from the top and bottom of the orange so that it will stand upright on a cutting board. Use a sharp knife to slice under the peel and the pith (in a rounded motion), exposing the flesh of the orange. Finally, carefully hold the ‘naked’ orange in your hand, then slice between each membrane to release the segments.
3. The segmented orange remains can be used for the salad dressing! Squeeze any excess juice from the segmented orange to be used in the dressing. It is juicy!
4. Use high quality crab! We have used and loved North Coast Seafoods Culinary Reserve for years! Their seafoods are all sustainably caught, high-quality, and frozen fresh. You can taste the difference!

At this point, it’s about layering and plating everything together. Alternatively, you can assemble in a large bowl, toss with the homemade vinaigrette, then serve family-style!

Different Types Of Crab Meat

While you can use any type of crabmeat in this recipe, we love the delicate nature of North Coast Seafoods Culinary Reserve Jumbo Lump crab.

You can also use lump crab meat (broken pieces of jumbo flake and smaller flake pieces from the body of the crab), super lump (from the smaller and broken pieces of jumbo lump), or colossal crab meat (which comes from the largest, unbroken lumps muscles from the crab’s swimming legs).

They range in price point, but all hail from Blue Swimming Crabs. These crabs are steamed immediately, then their meat is hand-picked, chilled, and packaged. This is the brand of pasteurized crab meat we have been purchasing (and loving!) for years. The crab has a sweet, buttery taste and a delicate, flaky texture. Plus, it’s Certified Heart Healthy by the American Heart Association. Tastes great and is healthy? Yes, please! If you can’t find Culinary Reserve crab meats locally, they’re available for nationwide next-day delivery directly from North Coast’s website!

Eating this salad will make you feel transported to a fine French restaurant, which was certainly the goal, as the inspiration for this salad comes from Faubourg, a local restaurant in Montclair, NJ. It’s elegant, yet simple, and sure to be the star of any meal.

Want to give North Coast Seafoods a try?
Use code: WELLSEASONED15 for 15% off your FIRST ORDER on North Coast's Online Seafood Shop.

[[ recipeID=recipe-9l15c73gq, title=Crab Salad with Citrus & Fennel ]]

For more recipes from Ari Laing of Well Seasoned Studios, click here!

Ari Laing is a Connecticut-based Food Photographer, Stylist, Blogger, and previous Chef. Find her on Instagram at @wellseasonsedstudio and her blog at wellseasonedstudio.com.