Sea Captain's House She Crab Soup

Transcript:

Hi I'm Phillip Ratliff, chef at the Sea Captain's House Restaurant in Myrtle Beach. Today we're going to be doing our recipe for our famous she crab soup. It's been on the menu at the Sea Captains House since its inception in 1962; it's won many awards for us. Let's go back to the kitchen and I'll show you how we make this soup.

Okay, we're going to begin with unsalted butter. This is one fourth of a pound of unsalted butter. This is a much smaller recipe than we usually make for the restaurant. This is one of the recipe's you can make at home. So we just give this time, let this butter melt down on medium to low heat. We do not want to brown the butter at all. We're going to add one half of a medium fine diced onion. We're going to cook this onion in the butter until it's just basically pulverized. You do not want to brown the onion, just sweat it very slowly; take your time with it until it just turns very, very soft. By the time the soup's completed, the onion will almost disappear just into a puree.

Next, we're going to make a rue in the pot by adding 3/4 cup all purpose flour. You just want to take your time with this. Let the raw flavor cook out of the flour. As it cooks in with the onion, it will develop a little bit of a nutty flavor. We're going to add two cups of heavy cream, one quart of half and half. When this comes to the proper temperature, you're rue, which you made with the flour and the butter, will thicken the cream and half and half and give you that nice, creamy consistency you're looking for. This is a patient process. While this is going on, we're going to add a pinch of black pepper, a slightly larger pinch of brown nutmeg, save our salt for last.

As you can see, your rue has now reacted with your cream and half and half. Give you a nice consistency. We're going to add one half cup of good quality sherry. At this time, just a pinch of salt, we'll finish the soup later by adjusting the salt after we add our crab meat. All right, now at this time, you let this simmer on low, stirring regularly for about an hour.

Now our soup has simmered for about an hour, we're going to complete it by adding crab meat to it. I have here a pound of domestic blue crab meat I picked completely of shell. Only a domestic product will do. You don't want any of that imported stuff in this good she crab soup. All right, there you have it.

Thank you for joining us today on Chef's Secrets Revealed. I'm Phillip Ratliff and I hope you enjoy the she crab soup.

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