Crab and sea vegetable salad

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This simple crab salad recipe is easy to scale up or down, depending on how many people you're cooking for. It can be made with any sea vegetables you have, but samphire is particularly tasty.

This recipe is taken from Cooking: Simply and Well, for One Or Many by Jeremy Lee (HarperCollins, £30) Photography: Elena Heatherwick

First published in 2023

Jeremy says: "A favourite dish that illustrates the satisfying business of making the effort to cook and pick your own crab. A very good, simple, bright and briny salad that features often on our menu. We love the beautiful great cock crabs from Portland but happily suggest a dressed crab or three. To kill and cook crabs is, to quote chef Rowley Leigh, ‘a very messy business’ but pays a great dividend. The prize here is the great flakes – that texture so often lost in bought prepared crab meat. One exception to this rule is an unadorned, unpasteurised, dressed crab bought from a good fishmonger."

Ingredients

Metric

Imperial

Method

1

Bring a wide pan of water to the boil. Plunge in the sea vegetables and let cook briefly, just 30 seconds or so. Tip the vegetables into a colander and lightly cool with cold water from the tap. Let drain

  • 2 handfuls of sea vegetables, picked and rinsed (e.g. samphire and sea purslane, sea beet and sea aster, or seaweed such as dulse)
2

Whisk the yoghurt, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice and some salt and black pepper in a bowl until smooth

3

When ready, tumble the sea vegetables, crab and dressing into a bowl. Mix lightly and thoroughly. Taste for seasoning. Serve swiftly

  • 400g of crab meat, picked white and brown meat mixed, from 2 large cock crabs or 3 dressed crabs
First published in 2023

With the voice of a thespian and the culinary skills of a French master chef, Jeremy Lee is by far one of the most well liked chefs in London.

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