What's Cooking: Softshell Crab on Brioche, Chicken Broccoli Cheddar Stew, Patty Melts, Roselle Crumble & More!

We didn’t do much traditional Thanksgiving food this week, but that works out for all kinds of fun meals we can recommend you make now that Thanksgiving is over, anyway!

Softshell Crab on Brioche

We had a low key Thanksgiving just us in our new house since we were hosting a big Friendsgiving on Sunday.

We are getting turkeys from J&L Green Farm but we’re saving that for December and let them leave our personal turkeys out of their shipping madness the week before Thanksgiving.

So, we decided to be decadent and fry some soft-shell crabs on Thursday instead!

I love eating soft-shell crabs at restaurants, but had never cooked them at home. Per a recipe from All Recipes, I learned you have to remove the gills and the tail flap, so I handed them off to Grant for that part — he did it with a scissors very quickly and easily.

Then I mixed up a little egg batter with milk and eggs and some seasoned flour. Dipped in the flour first, then the egg mixture, then the flour again.

We have a bunch of rendered lard on hand, so we fried the crabs in that!

Then we ate the crispy, perfect fried crabs on Bellegarde brioche buns with heirloom tomatoes and truffle mayo, with a salad on the side. Grant put Swiss cheese on his bun, but I thought they were perfect without cheese.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup Meets Chicken Chowder

Grant and Cade finally dispatched two roosters from the last hen flock we culled and I decided the best thing to do for freezer space efficiency was to cook them down for pulled chicken and broth and freeze that, rather than parting them out and freezing raw.

So in the Instant Pot I did the four feet from both birds, plus one whole bird and then in the crockpot I did the other bird, cut into pieces.

Since birds in laying flocks live exponentially longer than broiler chickens, their fat is so much yellower, from all the extra months and years of eating grass and bugs. I pressure cooked the Instant Pot batch for two hours, then let it slow cook for another 18 or so hours after that! And the crockpot batch was about 24 hours in total.

Once it was done, I strained out the broth and let that cool in the fridge before putting in containers to freeze so I could peal the abundant fat off and freeze that separately.

Grant started the process of pulling the meat off the bones and made quesadillas one night.

And then the day I did all the final broth portioning and pulling the meat off the bones, I also made a really delicious soup, sort of a like a broccoli cheddar meets chicken chowder.

I started by sautéing onions in that gloriously golden chicken fat, then added the stems of bok choy, Swiss chard and mustard greens I still had in my fridge from when I used all the leaves for Palak Paneer. They were still in great shape.

I also did a few carrots, some pink celery from my freezer supply and then some Noble Jade Chinese broccoli and a broccolini bunch. I seasoned with mustard, coriander, black pepper and nutmeg and then added in the rooster broth. Once all the veggies were cooked, I added in the pulled chicken.

Then once the meat was warmed through, I turned off the heat to add milk, an egg yolk, cheddar and parmesan cheeses and nutritional yeast to add all the cheesy umami flavor and thicken it a little. You don’t want a soup boiling or even simmering anymore when you add cheese so it doesn’t get stringy!

It came out so lovely — rich and hearty and creamy, but full of veggies, too!

Cherry Tomato & Butternut Squash Sauce

Last weekend I had about three pounds of cherry tomatoes to trim up and use for something, so I decided to cook them down for sauce.

But then I wanted to make a big batch of meatballs for the week (big meaning 3 lbs of ground beef) and the cooked down sauce wasn’t going to be enough for that many meatballs!

So I decided to roast some butternut squash and puree that to bulk up the sauce.

The tomatoes cooked down first just with sea salt and a little butter (for Marcella Hazan vibes — until I learned of that recipe, I had no idea how much butter could brighten up tomatoes!).

Then I sautéed onions and garlic and added the pureed butternut squash and cooked cherry tomato mix. It was a perfect naturally sweet and sour and velvety smooth sauce.

Creole Cream Cheese Meatballs

So many of our meals are determined by what we need to use up and cycle out at the shop. We had some extra goat creole cream cheese pints. Last week I put some creole cream cheese in quiche crust and filling. This time I decided to use it in place of ricotta in meatballs.

I used my go to meatball recipe that does include eggs and breadcrumbs and just added some creole cream cheese in place of one egg (some ricotta meatball recipes do not have egg, using the cheese as the binder).

I seasoned them with garlic and onion powders, mushroom thyme seasoning and Smokey Shiitake and Black Garlic seasoning. It was a little tight cramming them all into my two beloved cast iron skillets, but I made it happen and got them browned and not steamed, somehow. (I like to start them on the stove and then transfer to the oven and this seems to work well even with lots in the pan!).

Once they were cooked, I added to the cherry tomato butternut squash sauce and we ate them the first night with garlic bread and a salad with arugula, radicchio, apples, pistachios and a balsamic vinaigrette. With some of the leftovers, I made some fusilli pasta for them.

Caveman Patty Melts with Gruyere & Caramelized Onions

Since we started getting brioche buns from Bellegarde, we haven’t done patty melts as often, in favor of burgers on buns. But this reminded me just how amazing patty melts can be!

I had a loaf of honey oat bread in my freezer and since I was making caramelized onions to go with kielbasa for Friendsgiving, I decided it was a patty melt night.

I used Caveman ground beef for these, too, and seasoned with German mustard, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder and mushroom thyme seasoning.

I cooked the caramelized onions down quite a bit and eventually deglazed with balsamic vinegar, which gives them just the right amount of extra sweetness and punchy contrast.

Then we put a thin layer of mayo on both sides of the bread and toasted in the skillet, then added in the burgers topped with gruyere cheese and the caramelized onions.

They were absolutely incredible, decadent and satisfying and paired well with another arugula, radicchio and apple salad and some steamed broccolini.

Strawberry Rhubarb Roselle Crumble

Strawberry nor rhubarb are very fitting for this time of year, but I have plenty of both in my freezer. And the next Louisiana strawberry season will be here before we know it, so it’s time to start eating down the supply.

I decided to zhuzh up this dessert for fall with the addition of gorgeous roselle hibiscus (which has similar sour notes to rhubarb but its own floral flavors, too), plus fresh ginger and spices including cloves and cinnamon.

For the topping, usually I do oats, but went with just a simple crumble topping this time. Since the fruit was frozen, I let it start cooking in the oven as I was making the crust dough. I let it bake for over an hour, so the fruit and roselle all completely fell apart and became jammy and absolutely delicious.