Make Lowcountry classic at home
A visit to South Carolina’s Lowcountry means more than Palmetto trees and pralines. I should know, after spending the weekends as a grad student driving from one end of the state to the coast for one reason: the food. The region’s restaurants serve the best briny oysters, bowls of freshly caught shrimp nestled on top of creamy grits and my favorite, she-crab soup. But I shouldn’t have to wait for a trip to South Carolina to serve this seafood stew.
Here’s how to make the Lowcountry classic in your own kitchen.
This creamy crab chowder is a specialty of Charleston. Scottish settlers brought partan bree, a traditional rice-andcrab bisque, with them when they emigrated in the 1700s. William Deas, chef and butler to Charleston’s mayor in the early 1900s, is credited with adding the red-orange roe to the now-famous soup.
Classically, she-crab soup distinguishes itself from other seafood chowders with the combination of crabmeat and crab roe. The roe gives the chowder its traditional orange hue and distinctive briny flavor. Crab roe, or the eggs from the female crab, are only available in the spring, making she-crab soup a seasonal specialty.
Today, crab roe can be difficult (if not impossible) to find because to protect the crab population, you aren’t allowed to harvest egg-carrying female crabs in many states. But an absence of roe doesn’t mean you have to forgo this decadent dish altogether. Make this special soup at home using lump crabmeat. Pull out the biggest clusters of crab for finishing the soup. Add the rest of the crab to a Dutch oven with rich cream, briny clam juice, lemon juice and a dash of sherry.