Chuck Hughes' Caribbean Jerk Crab Recipe

Chuck’s Day Off is the only show on the Cooking Channel I can watch in its entirety.  All the rest of the so-called celebrity chefs totally irritate me.  As far as I can tell, the only skills they acquired in cooking school were chopping and rolling their eyes ecstatically after tasting a mouthful of whatever they just concocted.  Boy, they sure can chop and  don’t miss an opportunity nor a beat to show us how well they do it. And there must be a special acting class they have to take to achieve that orgasmic look in the tasting scene. Chuck Hughes is good at it too but he’s also cute and affable and has some pretty good recipes up his  T-shirt sleeve.  If it weren’t for Chuck, I would have gone through life not knowing that POUTINE is a very popular Canadian dish that consists of french fries topped with cheese curds and gravy.   

So Chuck was just getting some crab legs out of his fridge, when my son walked in, looked at the television screen and said “wow, that looks good”. He loves shell fish.  Chuck proceeds to heat a bit of canola oil in a pan, throws in a handful of ginger slices, a rosemary sprig, the crab legs, sprinkles jerk seasoning over everything, shakes the pan a few times while things are heating up.  Then he adds lime juice and a little water.  He puts  the pan into the oven.  Five minutes, he says.  When he takes the pan out,  he adds a little butter, lots of parsley.  A good toss, and .. voila! Jerk Crab Legs a la Chuck.  Greg and I are drooling.

Greg leaves and comes back with a bag of crab legs.  Fifteen minutes later, he pulls the pan out of the oven, adds the butter and the parsley, gives everything a good stir, and while I get my camera, he’s already picking crab meat out of the claws.  I haven’t smelled anything so delicious since the last time I roasted garlic. I can’t even take credit for this heavenly aroma.  But  I did provide the incendiary jerk seasoning which I made from scratch with Spanish smoked paprika, black pepper, cayenne pepper, ground celery seeds, sea salt, onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder and a bit of thyme.*  Greg did all the rest. Holy maple leaf!  Not only is he cute and affable like Chuck, but he can cook like him too.

Here's a close-up of the crab legs:

* Minus the sea salt, this is my favorite mix of herbs and spices.  It is so good, I hardly miss salt.