Crabs

Adding a sprinkling of lump crabmeat to a dish that needs just a little something is a favorite trick of New Orleans chefs. But that’s a cliché and a waste of good crabmeat. The best crabmeat dishes employ the biggest lumps with the lightest of sauces. The flavor of the local blue crab is so distinguished that it needs no help. And it’s so subtle that it’s easy for a sauce to get in the way.

Louisiana crabs are the same species found throughout the Gulf and up the Atlantic seaboard. All forms of blue crabs are best and least expensive in the warm months. Crabmeat is always available, but its price skyrockets in the winter.