Crab Bisque

What I have been waiting since Thanksgiving - Crab!! This year crab season started really late in CA. At first it was due to fear of crab pots' entanglement with whale, then the fishermen went on strike, but nonetheless, CRAB IS HERE!!

At the start of the crab season, I always eat my crab plain without anything. No garlic butter, no sauce, nothing! Nothing beats the fresh cooked crab meat after months of waiting. This time I bought 5 live crabs and cooked them myself. I typically buy crabs that are already cooked, and I will clean and crack them myself. However, the store I ordered my crab from only has live crab for sale on the first day of the season so that's what I got.

The first night we had fresh crabs and crab risotto, second day I made a crab stock out of the shell, and crab bisque from the stock and leftover crab meat. My older daughter being the adventurous eater of the family loved the crab bisque.

Now the art of making crab bisque, there are couple ways to extract flavor out of the crab shell. You can either roast the shell, or just brown the shell in stock pot. I always do the latter and here's how:

Crab stock ingredients:

Shell of 2 crabs

2 Tsp of butter

0.5 medium onion

1 stalk of celery

Leek (optional, I like to save the outer part of the leek that is too stalky to eat for stock purposes, if you have fennel you can add fennel in there too)

2 cloves of garlic

12 pepper corn

2 sprigs of thyme

1-2 bay leaves

2 Tsp of tomato paste

5 oz of white wine

3 tsp of salt

To finish off the crab bisque, here's the ingredients:

1 Tsp of butter

1/4 of onion

2 Tsp of tomato paste

3 Tsp of flour

1 cup of cooked short grain rice

1 cup non fat milk

splash of white wine to deglaze (about 1/3 cup)

3-4 cups of crab stock

2 Tsp of cream fraiche

salt and pepper to taste

Meat from 1 crab

Step 1:

To make the stock, add the butter into a stock pot. When the butter melted, add the vegetables in there, saute till you can smell the vegetables, then add the crab shell. Continue to saute the crab shell, keep an eye on it until you start seeing browning at the bottom. It will take probably 8-10 minutes, be patient! Once it started to brown, add the tomato paste, you want the browning to continue, cook for another 2-3 minutes, then deglaze with white wine. Once the white wine is almost gone, add the aromatics, salt, and enough water to cover the shell, boil and then turn the stove down and simmer for 30 minutes. Once you are done, let it cool before you strain it.

Look at that deep color of the stock, it's flavor right there. With the amount of crab shell and water, you can probably make 6-7 cups of crab stock. We will use half of that for the crab bisque, rest you can put in the fridge or freeze it for use later.

Step 2 to make the bisque:

Add butter to soup pot, once butter melted, add onion, saute until soften, then add tomato paste. I like my tomato paste to brown slightly, then add white wine to deglaze. Very similar to making the stock, when white wine cooks off at least half, add the flour and then white rice (I have about 1 cup of risotto left from the other day so I just use my leftover risotto), cook slightly and then add crab stock. When it comes to a boil, turn stove down and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Turn stove off and let it cool enough to blend it (I love my vitamix for this), add the milk in there now. Once you finish blending, add it back to your soup pot, and then boil, add salt and pepper to your liking. I like to add 1-2 Tsp of cream fraiche to the soup depending on how rich you'd like your soup to be. Once the soup is ready, add crab meat and parsley on top, yum!