Wild-caught snow crab might hail from the ice-cold Arctic, but it’s a crustacean that’s light and sweet enough to crave on the hottest days of summer. Snow crab’s mellow flavor profile integrates easily with a variety of veggies and herbs that you’ll find throughout the sunniest months of the year, so keep this seafood in your weekly rotation for easy, crabby dishes all summer.
Here are 8 snow crab recipes for the summer that highlight the season’s best and brightest flavors:
Snow Crab Stuffed Squash Blossoms
At the peak of summer, pick up a bunch of bright orange-yellow squash blossoms and get stuffin’! This crab-stuffed squash blossom recipe from Regina Schrambling is a seasonal showstopper for dinner, gorgeous on the plate and easy to make. Both the blossoms and the snow crab are mellow and mild on their own, but they easily soak up the bold flavors of a Mexican-inspired tomato sauce as they simmer.
Japanese-Style Cucumber and Crab Salad
Because snow crab shreds so easily into fluffy, delicate fibers, it’s a great variety to use for this recipe from Just One Cookbook for a cucumber and crab salad. A vinegary dashi dressing gives this chilled salad a savory, pickled flavor profile that makes it the perfect accompaniment to any hot meal; for super hot summer days, you may even want to make a big batch of this to enjoy on its own as a light meal. You’ll want to use about five snow crab legs or so for every serving of this salad, or approximately half a cup of shredded snow crab apiece.
Chipotle Crab Stuffed Cucumbers
Saltscapes’s recipe for a snow crab timbale combines crab meat and cucumber in a retro-inspired, bite-sized format that’s ideal for cocktail hour. The recipe is quite minimal, aside from a zesty dash of chipotle hot sauce, so it’s especially important to use the sweetest, freshest cucumbers you can find at the market. For extra credit on this one, consider making a homemade batch of chipotle mayo to mix into the crab mixture.
Tomato and Crab Soup with Coconut Milk
This recipe from Bon Appetit is a rich, tomato-based soup with a pungent Thai flavor profile, garnished with fresh crab meat for a sweetness that adds a bit of balance to the dish. It’s the soup to make when you want to take advantage of ripe, red beefsteak tomatoes at your local summer market. If you’re feeling extra lazy, leave the shelling to your guests: Simply add snow crab legs to the soup while they’re still in the shell until they warm through. This will save you some time, and also allow you to infuse the soup with every last ounce of flavor from the crabs. Finally, serve the soup either warm or chilled, depending on your preference.
Broiled Snow Crab Elote
For effortless decadence, go for Food52’s street food-inspired recipe for a broiled crab and corn elote. It combines the essential elements for elote — sweet corn, light and salty cotija cheese, and mayonnaise — with fresh crab meat, elevating this Mexican classic with some wild-caught Alaskan flair. Snow crab is a particularly good choice of crab to use in this elote broil as it can be distributed evenly throughout the dish, ensuring that every bite is enhanced with a little morsel from the sea.
Snow Crab Panzanella
Toasty Cupboard’s recipe for a snow crab panzanella is basically a summer sandwich, deconstructed into a salad — with ridiculously delicious results. For the best panzanella, you can use any day-old bread. But don’t compromise on the tomatoes: Make sure they are incredibly ripe and flavorful, as they are an essential component of this salad. For a crabbier kick to the panzanella, save any juices that collect when you’re shelling the snow crab and go ahead and whisk that in with the dressing, adjusting the seasoning as needed to account for the extra brininess that the crab brings to the mixture.
Three-Ingredient Snow Crab Bisque with Zucchini
Not sure how to use all that zucchini? Try this recipe from Rozanne Gold for a three-ingredient bisque, featuring zucchini, dill, and snow crab meat. With the addition of a little water and salt, it blends up into a silky, dairy-free bisque that can be served hot or chilled. If you want to add a little more complexity to the bisque, feel free to use a stock rather than plain water as the liquid component of the recipe.
Crab and Avocado Hand Rolls
You don’t have to have insane sushi skills to make The Kitchn’s easy-to-assemble crab and avocado hand rolls. One of the best features of this low-carb recipe (no rice needed!) is that it is also a no-cook recipe, made with ripe avocado, ready-to-eat crab meat, and a package of nori. A few other basic ingredients help to give texture and flavor to the crab filling; feel free to substitute whatever you have on hand, whether it’s chopped shiso, a sprinkle of furikake, or even pickled radish cut into matchsticks.
