Photo: Dungeness Crab Bisque Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 Dungeness crabs
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 carrot, chopped
- 2 stalks celery, chopped
- 3 tomatoes, chopped
- 5 cloves garlic, chopped
- 5 shallots, chopped
- 3 sprigs fresh tarragon leaves, chopped
- 3 tablespoons Cognac
- 2 cups dry white wine
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 10 cups fish stock or water
- Salt
- Freshly ground pepper
- Cayenne pepper
- Pinch dried thyme
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1 tablespoon minced chives or parsley leaves
Directions
Remove the claws from the crabs and quarter the bodies. Heat a 6-quart stockpot. Add the oil and saute the crab pieces until they are red. Remove the pieces as they are cooked. Add the carrot, celery, tomatoes, garlic, shallots, and tarragon and continue to saute for 10 minutes. Pour in the cognac and ignite. When the flame has subsided, deglaze with white wine, and add the tomato paste, crab, and enough fish stock to cover. Season with salt, pepper, cayenne, thyme, and bay leaf and boil gently for 15 minutes.
In a small saucepan, reduce the cream by half. Remove the crab bodies from the pot and set aside. Add the reduced cream to the soup. Puree the soup, in batches, in a food processor. Strain the pureed soup and keep warm.
Remove the meat from the claws and cut into bite-size pieces and add to the soup. Season with lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Serve in heated soup bowls and garnish with minced chives or parsley.
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By gardner12am_9660421
Yakima, WA
on January 09, 2011
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I made this for my family and they could not stop talking about it for days. Wounderful!!!! So good it sould be the main dish.
By ruskozak_12503296
Millbrae, 43
on January 01, 2010
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I made the big mistake of straining the soup and throwing away all the vegetable and keeping the broth. So my bisque was more like a soup then a bisque. I'll attempt this again sometime in the future. I give it good because even with just the broth it tasted well, so i can only speculate that if i would have done it properly then it would be excellent.
By carriecuisine_1...
portland, 77
on November 21, 2009
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i used to be a soup chef in canada, my boss' recipe was not as good as this. even when i had to pick and deal with 100 crab shells, this recipe was more work but a better result. i bought my crabs, cooked 7 minutes...picked out my meat...returned the shells and bodies with celery and tomatoes and thyme and simmered that for a while....then followed this recipe pretty much as written. i'm serving it as first course on thanksgiving with a pacific nw twist.
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