Seafood is always everyone’s favorite. And crab cakes win the appetizer game when it comes to seafood. Crab cakes are easy to prepare and tastes extremely delicious. Traditionally crab cakes are made of just crab meat without any filling and then served as a platter or open-faced sandwich. Starting from appetizers in a three-course meal to evening snacks, crab cakes would be a perfect go. And since crab cake is mainly served as starters and entrees, we definitely need to spice up the dish a little bit.
Side Dishes for Crab Cakes
Although crab cakes are considered as traditional seafood, you can be a little bit creative while serving it. We all have to admit that in spite of being the center of attraction of your cooking, we need side dishes to hold the whole meal together. Let’s give you a heads up about spicing up your table with crab cakes! We’ll go through everything that goes well with crab cakes:
Potatoes
Potatoes always win the game when it comes to pairing skills. You can serve any of your favorite potato dish with crab cakes. Starting from mashed potatoes, potato wedges, roasted potatoes, French fries to your own potato casserole can be served with crab cakes.
If you’re planning to make crispy crab cakes, potato salad will be an ideal choice for you. And what’s more is, if you don’t want to serve potatoes separately, you can simply try potato crab cakes. Here’s a simple recipe of potato crab cake you can try. Simply enjoy your two-in-one!
Fresh Salad
Salads are win-win entrees when it comes to taste, appearance and nutritional values. And with this, you can a be as creative and innovative as you want. If you don’t want to serve your regular salad, you can even go for fruit salad, cashew nut salad or flavored salad. The plenty of vitamins in salads will offset the meaty crabs so our little suggestion would be to go for green salads.
Corn
Corns are also well known for its versatility as a side dish. We don’t really need to guide you about serving corn, do we? You can absolutely go with corn salsa, corn soup, corn salad or grilled corn.
Since crab cakes are crispy, corn casseroles will also be a great choice. And if you want both corn and crab cake to share the limelight, you can go for this sweet corn crab cakes, it’s a win-win! Lastly, don’t forget that you can always relish your crab cakes with corns.
Honey Mustard Sauce
Ah, here it comes! Sauces are made for nothing but crispy foods. And we all have to admit that honey mustard sauce every time leaves us licking our fingers! The creamy flavor of the honey mustard sauce is a great pair with crab cakes.
As a host, you can keep it all simple and still mesmerize your guests at the same time! This might seem a little boring option to a few. So here’s what you can do; add tomato ketchup, garlic sauce and black pepper with honey mustard sauce to make your own cocktail sauce!
Coleslaw
Starting from a healthy dinner to fancy parties, coleslaw comes with its versatility of serving. And with seafood, they would never get a “no”. It perfectly goes as a slider to the appetizer. It's mild taste perfectly goes with the spicy crab cakes. Even if you want to make fancy dishes with crab cakes like crab cake burgers, coleslaw would be the perfect compliment!
Vegetables
As we are going for spicy and crispy food, vegetables would be a great option to calm down its spiciness. And if you want to keep everything mild and healthy, what could be a better option than green and leafy vegetables? The cons with vegetables are that you have a lot to choose from.
Beans and broccoli have always won the slider game among vegetables, right? You can also go for spinach, sprouts, cucumber or avocado. Roasted and grilled vegetables will be the perfect pair with crab cakes.
But if you don’t have enough time for that, you can just simply steam or boil vegetables and serve them with garlic butter. Just remember to choose fresh and in-season vegetables to amaze your guests!
Mac and Cheese/ Asian Noodles
To make your dinner unique and memorable, tray pairing Asian noodles with crab cakes. Rice noodles will go best with crab cakes. You can top your noodles with crispy crab cakes to make it a main dish for your dinner.
And as we talk about mac and cheese, we know how favorite it is to everyone. This creamy and cheesy dish would be a perfect go with crispy crab cakes. So, you can serve your mac and cheese with crab cakes or you can prepare this delicious crab cake mac and cheese instead!
Asparagus
Asparagus and crab cakes are perfect partners if you're going for brunch. Aside from veggies and salads, you can serve asparagus and tomatoes as a healthy slider for your guests. This will complement your busy night dinner table healthily and simply. Pro tip, you can serve your roasted or fried asparagus sticks wrapped in a bacon strip to make your table look fancier.
Bread Rolls
Bread rolls are your busy night slider. It's a small loaf of bread that will perfectly compliment your crab cakes. Whether you make the bread at home or you buy it, they'll always be a win. Our suggestion would be to go with garlic bread. Biscuits would also be a good option in place of bread rolls.
Bacon
Gear up, bacon lovers! Here goes the good news for you. Bacon makes a good pair with everything. So you can simply serve vegetables wrapped in bacon strips to complement your crab cakes.
For breakfast, bacon would be perfect as a slider with crab cakes. And what’s more is, if you want to burst the flavors of bacon in your crab cake, you can make two-in-one bacon crab cakes to amaze your guests!
Mango Puree
Spicy foods always make great buddies with fruit purees. And since crab cakes are crispy, this would be a win-win slider! It makes your table look a bit more colorful and the health benefit comes as a bonus!
Mango puree comes to the savior here as its sweetness complements with the spicy and meaty flavor of crab cakes. You can use refrigerated mango puree but remember to bring it back to the room temperature before serving it.
Sour Cream/Dips
When the dish is crispy, a dip is always perfect to serve with it. We all know the versatility of sour cream as a side dish, right? You can serve your regular sour cream with them. But if you want it to be a little bit fancier, you can make a sour cream sauce or any cocktail sauce to serve with crab cakes.
For example, adding cold hollandaise sauce with sour cream could be a great dip to serve with crab cakes. The plus point is, you can be very creative and innovative with dips and cocktail sauces.
Remoulade or Tartar Sauce
Ah, that was an easy guess! Serving crab cakes remains incomplete without them. Speaking of dips again, remoulade sauce and tartar sauce are the best dips and dressing as well for crab cakes. Crab cakes with tartar sauce are perfect for holiday dinners or family occasions. These are two recipes of remoulade and tartar sauce for you to make them at home and to add gourmet feels.
Fried Okra
Fried okras are another great slider for crab cakes. Just simply cut the okra into pieces, dip them in flour or bread crumb and fry! Pro tip, it’s better to deep fry the okras.
Beverages
Last but not least, beverages. Lighter alcoholic beverages go perfectly with seafood dinners. So our suggestion for crab cakes would be beers or cocktails. The aromatic and tropical style of Sauvignon Blanc works as well!
Conclusion
Crab cakes are easy to prepare for regular cooks and cooking enthusiasts. You can try simple crab cake recipes if you’re a beginner. Crab cakes being an appetizer mainly, have simple and mild side dishes that anyone can prepare. So if you can’t think of the perfect dish for dinner today, you know how to serve your favorite crab cake, right? Goodluck!