Crab Cakes Baltimore-Style Recipe (2024)

Baltimore Girl comments. For real Baltimore crab cakes: No pepper flakes, parsley, scallions. No breading. Bake crab cakes in oven at 425 degrees F rather than fry--they are less likely to break apart if the oil is not perfect and they will have less fat and more crab flavor.
Remoulade is for my Richmond husband. Real Baltimorons use a tomato/horseradish/lemon/Worchestershire sauce-based co*cktail sauce.

Baltimore Girl adds: my Aunt Thelma from Easton/ St Michaels thought the best crab cakes in Baltimore were served at the Peppermill in Timonium. Not a lot of filling. My cousin Gail's recipe: All jumbo lump. 2Tbsp Mayo, 1 Tbsp mustard, 1/2 tsp Worcestershire. Salt. 1/2 tsp baking soda. One egg and a tsp of Old Bay. Scant 1/3 cup Panko. dash tobacco. Bake at 425.

Forget the celery, hot pepper flakes, finely chopped scallions probably the Worcestershire sauce and one of those eggs. Change the mustard to a bit of Colman's dry mustard, maybe some lemon juice and a little onion juice(grate the onion) and you have it. I am from Baltimore, believe me we prefer our crab cakes to taste like crab and not something else. We used to eat them with Saltines and some Frenches mustard, I still do.

Poor Sammy.Seems as though none of these commenters agree with your entire recipe Well I'm here to tell you I made these crab cakes a couple of times and whether authentically Maryland I don't know, being a Bronx girl, but I can tell you I loved them and will keep this recipe as a jewel in my box. I have also made this recipe substituting Cod in honor of my now living in Massachusetts and it worked fine.Thank you Sam, you,Mark Bittman and Melissa are my new kitchen gurus.

Baltimore guy here with the REAL recipe for Baltimore crab cakes from my mother''s mother's mother's mother: 1 lb crab, 10 saltine crackers, two T mayonnaise, one egg, 2t Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 T yellow mustard. Old Bay and parsley are optional. Please, no celery, no scallions, no pepper flakes, and they are sauteed in butter, not oil.

I have a similar recipe but without celery, pepper flakes, scallions or saltines. If you are going to fry the cakes rather than bake them, it is helpful to refrigerate them for an hour or so; they tend to hold their shape better and won't fall apart as easily,

Having grown up on MD's eastern shore, the recipe that we used was 1 lb crab meat, 10 Saltine crackers crushed, 1 beaten egg and Old Bay to taste. The crab cakes were about the size of golf balls and were cooked in a iron skillet. After the browned on one side, they were flipped and flattened to about 1/2". Once the second side browned, they were each placed on a Saltine and a couple of drops of hot sauce was added to the top. Add a cold beer and it doesn't get any better!

AGREED ... this is NOT a Baltimore (Maryland) Crab Cake, WAAAAAY to many ingredients !!! I was a chef at a four star restaurant in B-more and my crab cake recipe was in Washingtonian Magazine as the top crab cake in the Wash-Metro area for 10 seasons (until I relocated)...

Celery??? Never. Hot pepper flakes? Never. Scallions?? Never. Frying in butter is better than oil.

These crab cakes may be delicious, but you can't call them Baltimore style. No self respecting Marylander would ever put so many filler ingredients in their cakes, and we definitely do not use a remoulade.

I've made this recipe twice, to rave reviews. Used Panko instead of saltines, skipped the celery and scallions. As suggested in other comments, I refrigerated the cakes for an hour or so, then baked at 425°F for about twenty minutes. They came out a nice brown and the leftover cakes freeze well. Just reheat leftovers in a skillet for a few minutes.

Swap the crab for any fish and you’ll have a delicious fish cake and none of the controversy.

Also, anyone who has ever made any kind of crab cake would know that it takes waaaaaay longer to clean one pound of crab meat of cartilage left by careless commercial processors. The time on this recipe should be upped to at least 45 minutes.

Absolutely no substitute for McCormick's Old Bay. One of my sons puts this Maryland seasoning on everything. The company has recently added a hot version. Great stuff!

We loved these. Our notes for next time- reduce the salt a bit and mince the celery instead of chopping it. They were so easy to make and extremely satisfying!

Another local Baltimore take: no celery, no parsley, no scallions, no pepper flakes. The less bread crumbs and saltines the better. Add juuuuust enough bread crumbs OR saltines to hold the mixture together. Yellow mustard works just as well as dijon. Broil, don't fry.

I worked for 30 years as a five star chef in a shack overhanging a pier over the Chesapeake Bay where we caught our own crabs daily and fixed them in a kitchen with a one-burner stove using a recipe from my wife’s great great aunt’s husband. The one thing I can say is that if you use fresh crab and don’t burn the dang things, they’re going to be delicious

I have been making Pierre Franey's crab cake recipe for years. But recently, instead of bread crumbs, I have been breading them in finely crushed Saltine cracker crumbs. Somehow, I think they taste better. Maybe it's the extra bit of salt!Also, instead of Remoulade (which I confess, I have never made), I serve them with homemade tartar sauce: mix together 1/2 sweet pickle relish and 1/2 mayonnaise.

I won’t comment on which of the 101 one-and-only original recipes is best but I’ve never been satisfied with canned crab. Most recently, I’ve gotten the Dungeness crab sections (in the shell) at Costco. While not blue crab from the Chesapeake Bay, far better than anything canned. 2lbs in the shell nets about 14-15 oz of crab meat.

So happy to have more Pierre Franey recipes. IMO the Times recipe section has given up on European cuisine.

co*cktail sauce: pureed chipotles in adobo sauce (start with a spoonful) and Best Foods mayo.

This may very well taste good, but I don't understand how you can change/add ingredients that are NOT Baltimore-style and still think you can call it that. It's good but please change the name. If someone called a dish "New York Style (insert something like pizza, etc.) and it was not anywhere near resembling it due to ingredients and/or looks, NYers would run the author/chef out of town! Also, use backfin meat where available (like in Baltimore)

I made Baltimore Girl's cousin's version and loved them.

For 3/4 did same amount of green onions, celery and Worcester sauce and mayo as recipe

I used 1/2 cup Almond flour 1/3 cup cassava flour in place of the saltine crackers, then dredged in corn meal instead of breadcrumbs for a gluten free version of these cakes. They turned out great--crisp on the outside and moist and tender on the inside.

Too salty. Will have to go through the ingredient list and read the labels to adjust in the future.

Excellent! Made per the recipe, fabulous. Made homemade tartar sauce to complement

Delicious recipe, the remoulade also. Used fewer cracker crumbs, ground relatively fine.

I’ve tried so many crab cake recipes, even the one on the side of the lump crab container. Each one, meh. Until this one. Truly, truly the best. A cup of crushed saltines seemed like quite a bit, but I went with it. Created my own sour dough bread crumbs which fried up into a perfect crispy coating. This is most definitely a keeper!