Should I dilute the butter a bit with a little water? Also, anyone have success with simmering imitation crab legs in butter to make it more realistic?
If you have enough water in with the butter to actually simmer instead of fry, the butter won’t do very much during the cooking process. Water boils at 100 C, and the boiling will stabilise the temperature at 100 C and prevent it from climbing higher. A frying or saute process doesn’t have the water, and the temperatures can go much higher than 100 C.
The normal seafood boil recipe is no fat in the water, but do add a lot of seasoning to the water. Add a lot more seasoning to the water than you would normally add directly to the food.
Then for the boil, only boil the seafood for a short time, 1-2 minutes. Then turn the heat off, cover, and steep the seafood in the over-seasoned water like tea, until done. This gives the food more contact time to infuse with the seasoning without overcooking.
I’m trying to infuse butter flavour into the ingredients rather than fry
The main flavour components of butter are not going to infuse through water. If you want to add butter flavour to the final product, it would be better to baste the food in melted butter after it Congress out of the pot.
Would it taste fine if I steam it all then toss it quick in the butter old bay?
If you’re boiling it’s reducing the water content and concentrating the flavor.
That would be relative. If I’m boiling down a soup then yes it would be concentrated, but if I’m putting an ingredient in liquid, the ingredient itself will leach flavour into the liquid until equilibrium
But it does the same at simmer, as the water temp is basically the same. Boiling reduces the total amount of water faster than simmer concentrating the flavor.
Just in case you’re not aware, water boiling and simmering is at the same temp 212f/100c. The difference is how quickly the water evaporates. Just like ice water stays at the freezing point until all the ice is melted
The difference is the volume. Instead of boiling it in gallons of water, I’m trying to use more like a cup
If you’re not planning to eat the resultant broth, you may as well go sous vide; then there’s no flavor dilution.
Damn that’s actually a fantastic idea if I get a sous vide set up one day
You can continue to cook down your used boil water to make a seafood stock. Throw in your shrimp and crab shells for maximum flavor. You shouldn’t be wasting too much seasoning either way though. I usually do a sack of crawfish in a pot that is not that much bigger than the sack. You only need a lot of water if you can’t heat the water quickly (like using a stove instead of a gas burner)
What are some ways you use your stock?
As a substitute for water. I’m not very creative with food so seafood stock would be used in seafood gumbo and chicken stock in jambalaya, rice and gravy or chicken and sausage gumbo.
