Mini Crab Cake Sandwiches with Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato

Amy Casey ~12.12.20

Mini Crab Cake BLTs

Mini Crab Cake Sandwiches with Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato. Delicious, slightly briny and delicate crab cakes with bits of crispy bacon are layered with the classic BLT ingredients of tender lettuce, tangy fresh tomatoes and mayonnaise on soft rolls. The mini crab cake sandwiches are PERFECT for holiday entertaining.

The holiday season is in full swing, and I love it! Our favorite family tradition is to celebrate Christmas Day with an appetizer party extravaganza. Platters of chilled shrimp, antipasto skewers, delicious meatballs and creamy deviled eggs are everyone’s favorites. And this year, I have a super fun and delicious recipe to add to the party. Everyone will swoon over these Mini Crab Cake Sandwiches with Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato. Check out my step by step video just before the recipe.

Cooking with Crab Meat

Seafood, and especially crab, is my favorite to cook with year round. So, when my friends at North Coast Seafoods asked me to come up with a holiday recipe featuring their delicious salmon, shrimp, and crab, I jumped at the chance! We love anything seafood in our family so creating a new recipe with their delicious high quality seafood is a fun and tasty task.

Like many families, our holiday travel plans are put on hold this year. We will be hunkering down at home instead of heading to the Midwest to celebrate with our extended family. We will miss our many cousins, nieces, nephews, grandparent and grandbabies. But our annual appetizer extravaganza will go on! Albeit with a smaller group.

Crab is such an elegant ingredient, and it is readily available. I’ve been cooking with North Coast Seafoods Culinary Reserve crab at home and for my personal chef clients for years. Culinary Reserve is premium quality crab meat that is hand-picked from wild blue swimming crabs. It is readily available at my grocery store. But if your store does not carry it, North Coast Seafoods ships a wide variety of delicious seafood overnight right to your home.

Types of Crab Meat

With a variety of crab meats, it can be confusing on what type to use in which recipe. Here’s a quick rundown of the different types of crab meat.

• Jumbo lump or Colossal ~ this crab meat comes from the crab’s swimmer fin muscle. Each crab only has 2 of these muscles. It takes a lot of crabs to make 1 pound of super lump crab meat. Serve this ultra special and delicately flavored crab meat all by itself.
• Super lump ~ this crab meat is the smaller and broken pieces of jumbo lump crab meat. It is perfect for crab cakes.
• Backfin ~ this crab meat is more flakey than the lump varieties. It is meat from the back of the crab and small bits of lump crab meat. It is delicious is soups and dips.
• Claw ~ this crab meat is darker in color and has a hearty flavor. It is tasty in crabmeat stuffings and chowders.

Crab Cake Sandwich Ingredients

I am so excited to make my Mini Crab Cake Sandwiches for our Christmas party. The slider sandwiches are extra special with the addition of the classic BLT ingredients of bacon, lettuce and tomato and a slathering of mayonnaise.

• super lump crab meat
• salted butter
• onion
• celery
• Worcestershire sauce
• Old Bay seasoning
• Dijon mustard
• mayonnaise
• large egg
• bacon
• seasoned breadcrumbs
• fresh parsley
• slider rolls
• lettuce
• tomatoes
  
  

Crab cakes come together in a snap. Combine sautéed onion and celery with super lump crab meat. Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, and seafood seasoning (I like Old Bay seasoning) add just the right amount of savory, tangy and salty flavor to the sandwiches. An egg, mayonnaise and a touch of seasoned breadcrumbs hold the crab cakes together. The mini crab cake sandwiches are sautéed in butter to add a golden brown crust and rich flavor.

Cooking Tips for Crab Cake Sandwiches

• There are several different kinds of crab meat. Jumbo lump, super lump, backfin, and claw, are the types of crab meat available. For crab cakes, I love to use super lump crab meat. It has a delicately sweet flavor that is slightly briny. It is less watery than the other types of crab meat so less binding ingredients (like egg, mayonnaise and bread crumbs) are needed to hold the crab cakes together.
• Be sure to gently fold the ingredients to combine them. You want to keep the lumps of crab to stay together as much as possible.
• Use a 1/4 cup measure to easily portion the crab cake mixture into patties.
• Refrigerate the formed crab cakes for about 20 minutes. Don’t skip this step! This will help the ingredients meld, and the crab cakes will hold their shape better when sautéed.
• For the most delicious and decadent crab cakes, sauté them in butter. Not only does the butter add a rich flavor to the crab cakes, but it also makes for a beautiful golden brown crust.

The sandwiches are made with mini crab cakes and they are just loaded with delicious crab meat. And who doesn’t love a great crab cake?! These ones are heavy on crab meat because that is where all the goodness it. Classic BLT ingredients of bacon, lettuce and tomato complete these adorable and delicious slider sized crab cake sandwiches.

Mini Crab Cake Sandwiches with bacon, lettuce, and tomato

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