What is Crab Salad?
Canned crab meat combined with finely-chopped celery and shallots, and mixed with mayonnaise and seasonings. Crab salad has a slightly chunky texture and a rich, umami flavor. It can be served on bread or lettuce.
What does Crab Salad Taste Like?
Salty is one of the five main tastes. It has a satisfying and addictive quality with hints of sourness. Salty foods include cheeses, cured meats, chips, and olives. It is used in almost every dish and prepared food. Salt is added to enhance flavor and offer a distinctly salty taste.
Sweet is one of the five main tastes. It has smooth and round notes in its flavor profile. Sweet is a naturally occurring flavor in many foods, including fruits, berries, winter squashes, sugarcane, and honey. The sweet taste in these foods is due to a higher sugar content. Sweetness is characteristic of desserts and is used as an accent in savory foods.
Umami is one of five main tastes. It is savory with a depth of flavor. Umami is a taste in many foods, including meat, seafood, beans, and nuts. It is both naturally occurring and created through the specific use of ingredients to create a satisfying taste. Umami is characteristic of proteins and savory dishes.
Ingredients
Crab meat is obtained from the shelled crustacean, called a crab. The meat usually comes from the claws and legs of the crab. The meat has a stringy and lumped texture that is white and fairly juicy. It tends towards the tender side and has a sweet ocean-like flavor.
Mayonnaise is a cream colored condiment and thick sauce, or spread. Mayonnaise is made by slowly adding oil to a mixture of raw egg, vinegar and seasonings, until it thickens. This is done by continuously whisking. The flavor is mild, tangy and a bit salty with a comforting quality from the creamy texture. Mayonnaise is a multi-use ingredient for sauces, cold meat salads, sandwiches and more.
Celery is a light green vegetable with tall, thin fibrous stalks and green leaves at their tips. They are extremely juicy and comprised of 90% water. They grow in clusters, sharing a base with about eight or nine ribbed stalks. The texture is crunchy, juicy and has a refreshing flavor that is light, sweet and vegetal. Celery can be eaten raw or cooked into soups and other dishes.
Shallot are a type of onion with a milder flavor than the large bulb varieties. Shallots are small onions in a lumpy oblong shape. They have a papery dry, brown skin that protects the ringed layers of the onions flesh. These layers are white with hints of purple and are juicy and crunchy. The shallot has a sweet and gently sharp taste that once cooked lends a silky and savory sweetness to a dish.
Salt is a mineral composed mostly of sodium chloride. It is the main flavoring used in food and is naturally occurring in certain foods, such as cheese, beets, meat and celery, plus many others. Salt is white and has finer granules than sugar. Many commercial salts include iodide, while others exclude it. Most salts are white, while some are naturally pale pink with minerals. Salt brings out the flavor of something and can create a tangy mouthfeel, if used in excess.
Paprika is a spice made made not from one type of pepper but from multiple varieties of sweet peppers and chili peppers. Common paprika is not spicy, but some paprika will be mildly spicy if hotter peppers are used. The pepper is dried and ground into a fine red power used to season savory dishes. The flavor is both sweet and pungent with a hint of bitterness that can emerge when it is cooked.
Fresh dill is a a fringed green herb, with slender stalks. The fringe of the dill is dried using mild heat or air, and is gently ground into tiny, short, thread-width pieces. The color is a muted green when dried and has delicate flavor of fennel and anise with a hint of bitterness. Dried dill is commonly used in egg dishes, savory herbed baked goods and with fish.
The peppercorn plant grows in tropical climate and produces tiny black fruit. The fruit is dried and become hard. At this point it is ground into a textured powder comprised of black and grey dots. It has a flavor that is spicy, pungent and sharp. Pepper is an extremely popular spice, especially in Western cuisines and lends a gentle heat to dishes. There are different varieties of black pepper and the flavor changes subtly because of this.
