Photo by staceyviera.

Dish of the Week: Blue crab salad

As a native Marylander, it’d be impossible for me to not write about blue crabs as the dish of the week once every summer. They are one of my favorite foods, and as we’re starting to enter August, they’re getting cheaper, larger, and more plentiful. It also helps that due to a ban on the crabbing of females in the Bay, they’re making a resurgence in the Chesapeake. (Most of the ones we see come from the North Carolina and Gulf coasts.)

Last weekend, I decided to go all out and purchase a bushel of crabs at the Maine Avenue Fish Market. I managed to get them for $65, which is a steal by any means, though I am sure I could have haggled them down to a lower price; don’t be afraid to walk away to another vendor.

But one thing is for sure, a bushel is a heck of a lot of crabs, and my friends and I barely made a dent. So what do you do with four dozen leftover crabs? The delicate, sweet meat of blue crabs can sometimes be overwhelmed with the addition of butter and Old Bay. Luckily if it “grows together it goes together,” and there are plenty of foods in season that make for the trappings of a crab salad. Hop over the jump for the ingredients for an easy-to-make recipe.