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Crab Leg Feast For The Holidays!

Growing up, we had a Christmas Eve seafood feast tradition. I grew up near the water in South Florida. Fresh seafood was easy to access. It didn’t matter if we caught or trapped it ourselves or had to buy it at a seafood market. It was readily available. Each year would be different, as we might have a traditional clam bake one year and fresh-caught yellowtails the next. I remember all of it like it was yesterday.

holiday seafood feast

Now that I have a family, I have carried on the tradition. Every year I prepare a seafood feast for our holiday guests. I live in Michigan now, and fresh seafood is not readily available. However, my friends at the Erie Fish Market outside of Toledo, Ohio, have made getting fresh seafood much easier. Thanks to the guys at Erie!

One of the perks of my job is having a CVap® CAC503 Cook & Hold Oven in my home kitchen. Over the years, I’ve cooked different seafood items in CVap, but never the whole shooting match. I decided to try and see just how much food I could cram into my little CAC503. My menu consisted of butter-poached warm water lobster tail, jumbo snow crab legs, jumbo sea scallops, little neck clams, bacon-wrapped stuffed shrimp, steamed oysters, corn on the cob, red-skinned potatoes and a couple of strip steaks (for my weird wife who doesn’t like seafood).

strip steaks
lobster tails and shellfish

Into the Oven

My CAC503 was set to a low temp steam cycle with 100% humidity (doneness at 145 and browning at 0). ALL the seafood was prepped and loaded in the oven while my guests were arriving. Our party was going great, and the eggnog was flowing, which caused the seafood to be in my CVap oven a bit longer than I had originally planned (by two hours). However, when I removed the food, it was perfect! Even delicate dishes like fresh seafood can’t overcook in a CVap oven.

I asked some of my guests to sear the scallops, bacon wrapped shrimp, and steaks to finish them off. This was a fun way to get the foodies involved with the meal preparation. As they were searing these items, I placed some unsalted butter into the CVap to melt. After that I cut and seasoned the potatoes and put them back in to stay hot with the crab legs, lobster tails, clams and oysters.

searing scallops, tuna, and shrimp
sensational seafood

Digging In

Once everything was on the table the only sounds were crab legs cracking and forks scraping the plates. The food was cooked perfectly. Lobster was a perfect texture, crab legs were easy to crack and melted in your mouth. Steamed clams and oysters were very plump and juicy. Scallops had a texture that blew everyone away. The potatoes and corn even got high marks (I didn’t even try them as there was seafood to eat). My experiment was a complete success! I will be doing this again next year but of course with a different menu. Any suggestions?

On a side note, I went overboard preparing for this dinner and we had a lot of leftovers. We decided to make a mixture of lobster, crab, clams, scallops, shrimp, a couple dashes of lemon juice, fresh dill and parsley. I picked up some flounder at Erie Fish Market, prepped the fish, and topped with the seafood mixture. It was topped with Panko bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese. The seafood stuffed flounder was broiled until the top was brown and crispy. This was absolutely amazing! It was great to eat two amazing seafood dinners back to back. Try it, I bet you’ll like it.

the seafood feast is ready to eat

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