Maryland Crab Soup #FishFridayFoodies

This month Fish Friday Foodies theme is 'Seafood Stews and Soups of the World'. Some suggested ones included: bouillabaisse, bourride, cioppino, caldo de mariscos, courtbouillon, chowder, bisque, Mae-un tang, Shui Zhu Yu, Tom Yum, etc. Our gracious host Stacy Livingston Rushton of Food Lust People Love set this lovely theme with a motto of 'Let's take a world tour together one comforting hot bowl at a time!'

I was glad to try this recipe out. Hope you enjoy making it as much as I did!

This recipe comes to you from the Chesapeake Bay area in the USA!! 

I made this prior to Lent 2016 as we do not eat any meat, fish or eggs during the days of Lent.

What do you need:

• 4 large tomatoes, boiled and slightly mashed (in whole)
• 1/2 cup of lima beans or white beans
• 1/2 cup of sliced carrots
• 1/2 cup of corn kernels
• 1 tbsp of chopped onions
• 11/2 cups of water
• 2 tbsp of Old Bay Seasoning (Refer Notes*)
• 1 cup  of beef broth 
• 1/2 kg crab meat - either blue crab if available or in my case the Three-spotted crab (Refer Notes*)
• 8-10 crab claws, steamed and cracked slightly
• 11/2 litres water

The Make:
Serves 5-6 adults | Preparation Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: up to 30 minutes

1. In a large cook pot (with a lid), place the tomatoes, carrots, corn, onions, lima beans and sufficient water along with the beef broth and Old Bay (or alternate) seasoning and cover and cook for 5 minutes on medium-low heat.

2. Boil the 11/2 litres of water to boil, add the cracked crab claws and boil for another 5-6 minutes. Drain the crab and set aside.

3. Next add in the crab meat and the claws if you are ok with it (*Refer Notes) to the cook pot. Serve hot with your favourite soup sticks, crackers, bread or on its own.


Notes:
1. Since we live in India now and Old Bay Seasoning is not available what you can do is take a mix of mustard powder, paprika, celery salt, bay leaf, black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, mace, cloves, allspice, nutmeg,cardamom powder and ginger powder. Please feel free to avoid one or more of the ingredients based on availability. For eg. instead of celery salt, I added 2 tbsp of diced celery.
2. Some people do not like claws or shells or bones of fishes/meat in their serving plate so you can skip accordingly.
3. For the crab meat, you can either use already picked crab meat from the market if available or you would have to shell it yourself which is not too hard really. There are a lot of self help videos available. One such videos for your convenience is available here. In my case I love the bones and shells in my fish and shell food so I took the liberty of adding it in here. My daughter too loves to crack a claw and have the juicy meat of the crab so double the fun! 

Would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies?  We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month.  To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517@gmail.com.

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