Drunken Crab Stew

What inspired me to make Drunk­en Crab Stew? Well, I had a pound of Mary­land crab meat I bought at South­ern Mary­land Crabs & Seafood, in Wal­dorf, Charles Coun­ty. The crab meat was packed by Ruark and Ash­ton, Inc. in Hoop­ersville, MD, Dorch­ester Coun­ty, on the East­ern Shore. And, I want­ed to make some­thing oth­er than crab cakes… again.

While I like corn-and-crab chow­der, I was look­ing for some­thing with a bit more vari­ety to it. But not toma­to based, like a typ­i­cal Mary­land crab soup. And I didn’t want to use either Old Bay sea­son­ing or J.O. crab sea­son­ing. A lot of folks seem to think it can’t be a Mary­land seafood dish unless you use one of those sea­son­ings. I com­bined some aspects of the chow­der and the soup, switched some things around, and added sher­ry, which I think goes well with seafood. I named it Drunk­en Crab Stew because of the sher­ry.

I also want­ed to make it a one-dish meal. The veg­eta­bles I used includ­ed pota­toes, onions, corn, string beans, car­rots, and baby lima beans. The liq­uids, in addi­tion to sher­ry, includ­ed seafood stock, milk, and cream (along with melt­ed but­ter). I orig­i­nal­ly envi­sioned using bacon, but found a pack­age of diced ham, so added that instead. I also used a pre-pack­aged bag of home fries, made with diced pota­toes and onions, spiced with papri­ka. Know­ing the home fries didn’t have a lot of onions, I added some more to the dish.

As the veg­eta­bles and ham were cook­ing, the kitchen start­ed to smell won­der­ful. The stew not only had a nice aro­ma, but the taste was great even before adding the crab meat and sher­ry at the end. You could eas­i­ly serve it with­out them, but please, go all the way! I served it in bowls with crusty beer-bread on the side. I made the bread just before the stew, using Guin­ness Extra Stout for the beer. The recipe for the beer bread was pub­lished here on April 21, 2017. Below is my recipe for Drunk­en Crab Stew. ♦