Are you down with cheese and seafood or are you a scaredy cat? This week I tackle another dish my mom made when I was a kid and elevate it a touch while turning it into a sandwich inside of homemade sourdough English muffins.

Posted on | by Jonathan Surratt
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Read Time: 12 minutes

Italian chefs, in particular, have had a serious problem with the mixture of cheese and seafood. But I personally feel that it can work great if they’re paired properly. The issues with cheese and seafood dishes are rooted in the fact that seafood, like shrimp or lobster meat, is delicate and might be overpowered by strong flavors. Those chefs put a great deal of effort into focusing and highlighting the light flavors of fish, and they probably feel that grating a pile of Parmesan on top would ruin that balance.

I can understand that point of view, but I would also like to introduce you to delicious things like lobster mac and cheese, seafood Alfredo, shrimp over cheesy grits, or even a New York City bagel stuffed with lox and cream cheese. Sometimes the combination just works.

This sandwich I’m writing about today has a focus on a blend of crab meat and processed cheese. Yeah, you read that correctly, but we’ll also introduce a pickled element in the form of a crunchy slaw. Along with the cheesy crab and slaw, I’m sharing a great way to use up sourdough discard and my newest bread recipe in the form of sourdough English muffins. It’s currently hot as heck, so English muffins work pretty well since you don’t have to bake them in the oven.

I painted up an illustration that I think the “Live, Love, Laugh” crew would appreciate. You can print it out and hang it in your kitchen.

What is this sandwich?

This is a crab and cheese-filled sandwich that’s paired with a pickled okra slaw inside of homemade sourdough English muffins. Even if you’re angry about cheese and crab in the same dish, most of that sounds pretty good, right?

When I was a kid, my mom used to cook something that we called “crab melts.” Like a lot of recipes that were cooked before the 21st Century, these recipes were shared from family to family in church cookbooks or passed around on handwritten note cards. I’m not sure where my mom got the recipe originally, but it’s very similar, if not the same, as a lot of others that you will now find online.

A search on Google will come up with tons of recipes that all use similar ingredients. My mom called these crab melts, but you can find recipes for crab delights, crabbies, crab meltaways, or even deviled crab melts. This cheesy crab concept, or something very similar, even shows up in a movie that I do not remember watching, but my wife claims I did, called Silver Linings Playbook. The dish that Bradley Cooper’s character gets so excited about takes on the name “Crabby snacks.” All of these crab recipes I’ve linked to and mentioned are practically identical; they all contain Kraft Old English cheese, and they seem to have been most popular along the East Coast of the United States.

The earliest recipe I found was from the early 1980s, but some online sources claim crab meltaways were invented in the 1960s, and it’s very possible that someone at Kraft created the recipe in a marketing ploy to promote the spreadable Old English cheese.

I painted this illustration to capture the full crab melt sandwich experience.

Kraft Old English cheese spread is a product that was invented at some point in the 1930s and might not always be easy to find. It’ll be near the Cheez Wiz in an unrefrigerated section of the store if your grocery stocks it. If you can’t find Kraft Old English cheese spread, you can get it online, or some recipes I’ve seen call for shredded cheddar, but I think your textures would be different.

Below are a couple of examples of crab meltaways that I found on archive.org. This is one of those recipes, like ham delights, that are simply ALL OVER the internet with everyone taking massive inspiration from other recipes.

From the cookbook Beginning again : more hors d’oeuvres published in 1982
From Southern Living’s 1993 Annual Recipes book.

Below are photos of my mom’s recipe, which is very similar to the other two recipes I’ve already shared. My mom was collecting family recipes into a book to share with the rest of our family and friends, and I’ve found that a lot of recipes from that era were composed of very similar ingredient lists with differing instructions. I didn’t even ask her because she’s been making crab melts for 40+ years, but she either got inspiration for the recipe from a cookbook or magazine, or it was from another friend before she added it to her collection.

You can totally see how much abuse my mom’s cookbook has received over the past 15+ years since she had it printed. My mom’s recipe, plus her instructions, is what I used to base the sandwich recipe I end up sharing down below.

My wife and I make this recipe from time to time. It makes a lot of crab melts that can be frozen and cooked when you need a quick meal. This photo is from October 10th, 2019.
This is my well-used mom’s cookbook. I’m currently pointing towards myself from the early 2000s. Click photo for larger.
My mom’s recipe for crab melts. I’m guessing that this is actually a little bit of Kraft Old English cheese spread on the paper.

If you’re a Southerner from the United States, you might be aware of another crab dish that was very popular in the 1980s and 90s, which is called deviled crab. As you’re reading this, you might be wondering if that is similar to crab melts?

What is deviled crab?

I do not have any proof of this, but it seems likely to me that deviled crab could have been the precursor to crab melts.

There are two different dishes that take on the name of deviled crab. One was invented in the Tampa region of Florida, and it’s very similar to what Marylanders would call a fried crab cake. The second type of deviled crab originated on the east coast of the United States, somewhere between Georgia and Maryland, and in this version, crab meat is mixed with bread crumbs and spices and then added back to the opened crab shell to be served and eaten with a fork. This version is more similar to what East Coasters would call a crab meltaway or crabbie snacks, minus the processed cheese and with the addition of bread crumbs. Deviled crab is often stuffed back inside the hollowed-out crab shell and served that way.

There are thousands, if not more, deviled crab recipes online; this one is from a cookbook my mom’s close family friend (and, in turn, my friend) Jessie Owens created back in the early 2000s. Mrs Owens died in 2009, and she was a great friend to my mother. She was a much respected cook, entertainer, and a longtime teacher who shared a lot of what she knew in this valuable-to-me (and others) cookbook. This particular recipe is attributed to Jack Potts, whom I do not know, but here it is if you want to give it a shot.
I found this Carolina crab tartlet recipe from a Junior League of Raleigh cookbook from the early 2000s. This isn’t really deviled crab, but it’s sort of leaning crab melts with Swiss cheese instead, so I added the example here.

Now that we know what sandwich we’re making, we need to make some bread, but first, I want to discuss my newest and most favorite way to use the discard that’s created in the sourdough process.

Sourdough discard cracker bread

I got into this a little bit in the last sourdough-focused bread recipe that I shared, but the feeding process involved with sourdough is pretty annoying. To keep your starter active, you have to feed it a couple of times a day by removing and discarding a large amount of the starter, and then you add more flour and water. The disposable part of the starter has to either be thrown out, or you can find a use for it in pretty much any application that requires water and flour. I have tried and created easy recipes that use sourdough discard for pancakes, waffles, and crackers that you roll out and slice before baking.

But my new favorite use for the leftover flour, water, and naturally occurring yeast is simply adding butter, salt, cheese, and black pepper to create a rustic sort of “cracker bread.” It’s hard to describe what this bread actually is; it’s sort of a cross between a cracker and breadsticks. It reminds me of something that might be tucked into the bread basket at a fancy restaurant. It’s soft and crunchy at the same time, and it doesn’t require any extra flour. The best part is you simply mix the ingredients, spread them onto a parchment-lined sheet pan with a knife or offset spatula until the discard mix is thin, and then bake it.

You simply need to add the ingredients into a bowl, mix, and then thinly spread it on parchment to bake.
The thinner you spread, the crispier the cracker bread will turn out. I actually sort of like the crispy edges with some softer parts in the middle.
You can break the cracker bread up rustically, or you can slice it into strips or squares if you want.

It’s hard to create a recipe for this that I can share because the amount of discard that you’ll have will vary, so I once again created a very easy calculator that you can plug in the amount of discard that you have, and it will calculate how much of the other ingredients you will need to make a great batch of “cracker bread.” This is all using something similar to a “baker’s formula” to calculate 1 percent of salt and the right amount of butter and cheese that will create great flavor.

Check out my discard cracker bread calculator below. Next time you’re feeding your starter, you can apply it and have a simple recipe to create something tasty.

I fancied up a freshly baked batch of cracker bread, like it might be served to you at a restaurant. Don’t tell anyone, but that’s salsa pretending to be marinara.

Sourdough discard cracker bread calculator

This tool will build an ingredient list to help you turn your sourdough discard into parmesan and black pepper cracker bread. Enter the amount—in grams—of sourdough discard that you have on hand and the Sourdough Discard Cracker Bread Calculator will do the rest.

sourdough discard cracker calculator
Sourdough Discard Cracker Bread Calculator

Sourdough English muffins

This is my same English muffin recipe that I have shared before, except I swapped in Dr. John Starter for the instant yeast in that recipe. The original English muffin recipe called for a poolish, which is really just a fake sourdough starter anyway. A poolish is a mixture of flour, water, and yeast, and that’s exactly what a sourdough starter is as well.

Typically, with a poolish, you allow it to ferment overnight, which will give your bread just a bit more flavor. In this case, we replace the poolish with some sourdough starter, which brings even more sour flavor to the finished muffins.

English muffins start out going through some bulk proofing just like most other breads.
Then you portion into 12 portions and shape into balls.
The balls get pressed a bit flatter and rise for between an hour and two hours to let your sourdough starter lift things up fully.

Once the dough has proven for an hour or two (depending on the strength of your sourdough starter) you start out portioning the dough and then shaping it into balls like you’re making burger buns. The balls are flattened a bit and placed on a semolina or cornmeal-dusted parchment-lined sheet pan.

You’re not going to bake in this pan, so the shaped muffin dough can be close together. The dough portions will be carefully moved to a griddle or pan on fairly low heat to cook.

There are some English muffin recipes that use the oven, but in my opinion, they work best on a griddle or the largest pan you have.
Be careful moving the risen muffins to the hot pan. Try not to deflate the gas in the dough.
That golden brown top is hiding all the nooks and crannies inside.

You should start with a griddle or pan set to fairly low heat. I typically will cook for 3 minutes or so and then flip. If you know you have hot and cool spots on your griddle, you might need to rotate and flip to get the proper color on the exterior. You’re cooking these to color, and the internal temperature needs to be around 190 to 200 F. If the exterior is getting too dark, you can remove them to a sheet pan and finish baking them in the oven for about 10 minutes at 350 F.

Six English muffins cooling and ready to go.
You need to hit somewhere above 190 for the dough to be fully cooked in the middle.
Here’s some pretty sourdough English muffins you can look at!
This batch makes 12 muffins.
If you have 12 muffins, you can split them into 24 pieces, which means you can make 12 crab melts and still have 12 muffin tops to cover and complete sandwiches. Math.

Here’s my sourdough English muffin recipe that you can tackle when your kitchen cools off. Or you can just buy English muffins and get to work on the cheesy and crabby bits.

Sourdough English muffins
Recipe
Sourdough English muffins
4 hours and 55 minutes
Sourdough English muffins

Put your sourdough starter to work with this easy English muffin recipe. If your starter is not doubling every 4 to 6 hours, you may want to use the instant yeast in the recipe. Otherwise, you can leave it out.

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Cheesy and Englishy crab

I’m sure the cheese in these crab melts is a big turn-off for a lot of people. Almost all of the recipes online call for the same type and brand, which is Kraft Old English spreadable cheese, a processed cheese spread that tastes more like cheez wiz than any cheese I’ve ever tried that came from England. But honestly, a bigger problem I have with it is that the people at Kraft really should have spelled it Olde instead of just Old.

The concept and process for making crab melts is simple. You melt the butter and cheese together, and then you turn off the heat and mix all the other ingredients. Then you spread the mixture on top of split English muffins and freeze them. The beauty of freezing prior to baking means that you can store a lot of these in the freezer to be used whenever you’re ready.

I would bet that most people who make crab melts are making them specifically for use as appetizers for a party, so the freezing process means that you can do a lot of the work up front and then whip them out when it’s time to party.

Don’t spend too much on the crab meat. This small container was close to 20 dollars, but it will end up making 12 crab melts.
There’s not much that’s English going on here. Kraft released this in the 1930s, and it was meant to emulate the flavors of English cheese.
Drain the crab meat so that you don’t end up making the cheesy mixture too watery.

You can let them thaw before baking, or you can bake them directly from frozen; in my tests, it doesn’t really matter. After they’ve been frozen for about 2 hours, you can easily remove them from the sheet pan and move them to a freezer bag for storage. This means you have 12 crab melts in your freezer and can whip them out and have them on a plate in around 20 to 30 minutes directly from frozen on your next busy weeknight.

This mixture is what is placed on top of English muffins, and eventually it turns into crab melts.
Not much to look at, but it tastes pretty good!
Divvy up the cheese and crab mixture onto your English muffins and sprinkle with paprika.
The best part about these is that they can be baked from frozen. So you can make a batch of twelve in prep for a party or for a few quick weeknight meals.
Once the crab melts are fully cooked after about 15 minutes. I add muffin tops and broil to brown everything just a bit more.
Just FYI, there’s a reason that these are quartered and served as appetizers. They’re very rich! Two is a large meal in my opinion.

These crab melts are pretty tasty, but as I’ve said, they’re really rich. When I told my wife I was turning these into a sandwich, we both felt it was necessary to add other components that would tamp down the richness just a little. When we thought about a slaw, we knew it couldn’t be mayonnaise-based and had to have a bit more focus on vinegar and/or pickles.

Pickled okra slaw

This recipe doesn’t look like much, but it really worked well. The pickled okra brings a lot of flavor and texture, and this whole slaw helps to balance the really rich, buttery, and cheesy crab.

This is not a mayonnaise slaw; it’s more of a vinegar-marinated slaw that contains pickled okra that’s roughly chopped and added to shredded cabbage, pickle liquid, olive oil, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, honey, celery seed, and a little more salt and ground black pepper. The slaw cuts through the fatty flavor and texture in this sandwich, and also works great as a side dish.

My wife loves this brand of pickled okra. The hot version is pretty good too.
Here are 10 okras sliced. I still chop them a bit more so they’re a little bit smaller in the slaw.
Once the okra is chopped it’s not super visible in among all the shredded cabbage but it’s present in the flavor and texture.

I chose to shred the cabbage in this slaw, which creates a fine texture, but you could chop it or thinly slice it. The most important part is making sure that the pickled okra still has some size and isn’t chopped too finely.

My wife has always enjoyed my mom’s crab melt recipe, but she’s also always expressed that they were very rich and she felt they were a lot to eat without some sort of salad or roughage. She’s mostly responsible for the idea of a pickled okra slaw, and EVERY SINGLE night after we ate one of these sandwiches, she said the recipe below is the only way she wants to eat crab melts from this way forward. She liked the combo of the slaw and the melts so much that this is what we’ll be doing from here on out.

This is a pretty good slaw. If you’re an anti-mayo person, definitely give it a shot. I’ve eaten it on several deli-meat sandwiches and even a burger at this point.
Pickled okra slaw
Recipe
Pickled okra slaw
15 minutes
Pickled okra slaw

This non-mayonnaise slaw brings some textural and flavorful excitement to the mix from the additions of pickled okra and the brine that it soaks in. Jazz up your next burger or hot dog with this tasty slaw.

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Homemade MSG pickled okra

As I said, I did make the slaw for this sandwich with store-bought pickled okra, but I was just at the store and bought some okra to use with my tried and true MSG pickling method.

Turns out these are great, so I figured I’d whip up a quick recipe since this uses the same brine I use for my regular spicy msg pickles, my spicy msg dilly beans, and my MSG jalapenos.

You could use this okra pickle recipe to turn into slaw, and I will definitely be doing that the next time I make crab melts.

People worry about okra being too slimy, but the pickling process avoids that altogether.
Spicy MSG pickled okra
Recipe
Spicy MSG pickled okra
20 minutes
Spicy MSG pickled okra

Pickled okra is best enjoyed as a snack, but you can slice them up to add to your next burger or sandwich if you want to get a little wild.

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Crab melt sandwich photos and recipe

Here are several photos of the crab melt sandwiches I made on toasted English muffins. This sandwich turned out even better than I expected because the slaw and the muffin top both cut down on the richness from the crab and all the cheese. You should make some of these and let me know how they turned out.

Scroll just a bit past the photos to get the full recipe for crab melts and how to turn them into this great sandwich with the pickled okra slaw.

The crab melts almost fry in their own butter during the baking process, so the edges and some of the bottom get crispy.
Some of these sandwich photos look like there’s no bottom muffin there because the cheesy crab mixture cooks over the side in the oven.
These aren’t huge sandwiches, but they are very filling because of the rich ingredients.
The pickled okra slaw is putting in a lot of work to balance out all the butter, cheese, and crab.
Make sure to toast the top muffin to help add extra texture.
Crab melt sandwich with pickled okra slaw
Recipe
Crab melt sandwich with pickled okra slaw
Crab melt sandwich with pickled okra slaw view printable page for this recipe

This crispy and cheesy crab-filled sandwich is balanced by the bright vinegar in a pickled okra slaw. I've turned this old-school East Coast dish into a flavorful and texturally exciting sandwich.

Ingredients:

Crab melts
  • 1 stick butter
  • 5 ounce jar Kraft Old English spreadable cheese (or another cheese spread)
  • 1⁄2 pound crab meat, drained
  • 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon seasoned salt (or just salt)
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1⁄8 teaspoon cayenne pepper powder
  • 6 English muffins, split
  • paprika (sprinkled on top)
Pickled okra slaw
  • 1 head cabbage, shredded
  • 10 to 15 pickled okra spears, roughly chopped
  • 1⁄3 cup pickled okra liquid
  • 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1⁄2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 teaspoon celery seed
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon ground black pepper
Sandwich assembly
  • 1 cooked crab melt (from above)
  • pickled okra slaw (from above)
  • 1⁄2 of a split English muffin, toasted

Directions:

Crab melts: in a small pot, melt the butter and cheese spread. Once melted, add mayonnaise and whisk until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and whisk again.

Remove from heat and spread 1 to 2 tablespoons of mixture onto each half of a split English muffin. Place each cheese and crab-topped English muffin on a sheet pan and place the pan in the freezer for 2 hours. After 2 hours, everything should be frozen solid, and you can move the crab melts from the pan to a freezer zip-top bag and place them back in the freezer until time to make a sandwich.

Pickled okra slaw: add your shredded cabbage to a large bowl. If you have a food processor, don't forget that some of them have a shredding feature. Use that to shred if you can. Makes things quick. 

Add roughly chopped pickled okra, okra liquid, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, honey, Dijon mustard, celery seed, salt, and black pepper to your bowl and mix with a spoon to combine everything thoroughly. 

You shouldn't need any extra salt, but you should taste the slaw to see if it needs anything else at this time. 

Store in a container in the refrigerator for up to a week. 

Cooking process: when it's time to make a sandwich, preheat the oven to 350 F (175 C). 

Place a crab melt into the oven on a sheet pan and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and place one half of a sliced English muffin, cut side up, in the pan beside the cooked crab melt. Broil both the crab melt and the untoasted English muffin half until the naked English muffin starts to take on just a little bit of browning. If you do not have a broiler, just keep the oven on 350 and do the same thing.

After everything is toasty, remove the pan from the oven. Place a couple of spoonfuls of pickled okra slaw on top of the crab melt and top with the toasted English muffin half to complete the sandwich.

Serve and enjoy.

Check back next week

Next week, the temperatures in my area are dropping a little bit, so I might actually bake a bit more. Maybe we’ll roast a turkey and bake some bacon, and maybe we’ll find some blueberries to shift things around a little.