Fill Vegetables With Store-Bought Crab Cakes
Crab stuffed vegetables are certainly delicious, but I always feel a little guilty about mixing expensive quality crab meat with cheese and crumb and stuffing it into the mushroom. You can cut costs by buying whole crabs and dividing them yourself, but I tend to eat crab meat as soon as it comes out of the shell. However, store-bought crab cakes are a different matter, both financially and (for me) psychologically.
First, since they are already blended with other foods, they are quite cheap, and mixing them with cream cheese does not generate the same emotional response as mixing cream cheese with huge chunks of pure crab meat. I can usually find ready-made crab cakes on the seafood counter for about three dollars apiece. They’re also pre-seasoned with herbs and (usually) held together with some kind of binder, so all you have to do is break up the cake and pour the filling into any vegetable you think needs to be stuffed with crabmeat. Mushrooms are classics, but pumpkin, zucchini, and squash flowers are delicious when stuffed with a little crustaceans.
Whether you want to add cream cheese or additional herbs, or a little sautéed garlic or onions, you can certainly do it. You can also sprinkle crab-stuffed vegetables with a little fresh corn or homemade bread crumbs. The world is your oyster (or, in this case, your crab). When your vegetables are stuffed, you just need to put them in the oven at 375 degrees until the filling is hot and the cheese is melted and browned. This will take about 20 minutes. If you are using vegetables that take a little longer to soften, you can cook them for 10-15 minutes before filling. (I do this with stuffed mushrooms because I like them soft and pretty.)