Recipe for Quiche - with Crab Meat and Shrimp

I have a wonderful recipe for quiche that I’m going to share with you. I often use quiche recipes. Because I have a very “southern” spouse, however, I often call quiche “pie” so that he won’t think he’s eating something too fancy. He’s much more likely to eat chicken pie or crab pie than he is to sample something called chicken quiche or crab quiche. Yes, I’m a southerner, too, but I have no problem using the correct term for these dishes. Perhaps that’s because I’m female. You’ve probably heard that “real men” don’t eat quiche. I can quickly disprove that theory! Whenever I make the following recipe for quiche, hubby and the other men in the family gobble it up enthusiastically.

How to make quiche? It’s not really complicated. I think some cooks assume it might be difficult simply because of the name. The main ingredient in quiche recipes is usually eggs, along with cream or milk. Cheese is a popular ingredient, too. In addition to this base, practically anything else can be included – tomatoes, vegetables, meats, poultry, or seafood. All the ingredients are baked into a pastry shell. Use a pie crust, puff pastry, or be more “French” and use a bread crust. Make your quiche in a pie pan, a tart pan, or a spring-form pan.

Once you learn the basics of how to make quiche, you can create a huge variety of quiches by using your culinary creativity and your imagination. A quiche can serve as a breakfast dish, a main dish, or a side dish, depending on the ingredients you include. Desert quiches have become popular, too. if this surprises you, it shouldn’t. After all, quiche is basically a custard. For some ideas for your quiches, I make the following table:

Before continuing, I’d like to say a word or two about crab meat. The type of crab meat you use in your crab recipes is important. There are several types of edible crabs, and each has a slightly different taste and texture. My favorite of all of them is blue crab. This could very well be because we often catch our own and get blue crab meat for free. And obviously, it’s super fresh. More important than the species used in this recipe for quiche, however, is the form of crab meat that you use – fresh, refrigerated, frozen, or canned.

Fresh is best with crab quiche, but fresh crab meat can be hard to come by. I really like the refrigerated and frozen crab meat that’s pasteurized and comes in a can. You can also use leftover snow crab and Alaskan king crab from crab legs. As for the canned crab meat that’s not refrigerated, I don’t care for it. In my opinion, it has very little flavor.

Unless you pick the crabs yourself, you’ll need to examine the crab meat carefully before using it in crab recipes. Invariably, there’ll be small pieces of cartilage or shell – usually both. You don’t want to bite down on these hard pieces, and you certainly don’t to swallow one. Also, ready-to-use crabmeat can contain a lot of liquid, so you need to drain it first. I often squeeze mine gently in paper towels.

A lot of people don’t even realize how many species of shrimp exist, and for this recipe, that’s okay. Unless you have an extremely discriminating palate, I don’t think you’ll be able to tell the difference. Just make sure the shrimp are steamed or boiled, peeled, and deveined. Obviously, the tails should be removed.

Should you chop the shrimp, slice the shrimp, or leave them whole? That’s up to you. Personally, I like to cut larger shrimp in half for my seafood quiche. If I’m using very small shrimp, I might leave them whole. I like forking a nice chunk of shrimp. Using larger pieces of shrimp also makes a nice contrast in texture, as I usually flake my crabmeat.

If your significant other is averse to consuming quiche, you have my permission to call this crab pie, shrimp pie, or seafood pie. Otherwise, you can refer to it as crab and shrimp quiche, shrimp and crab quiche, or seafood quiche.