The evolution of corn and crab bisque! I am bringing this recipe to you guys a little bit earlier than I planned to. My original plan was to make a corn soup since I have been focusing on eating and cooking more vegetable dishes. The plan for cooking corn soup quickly began to morph into me wanting to cook corn crab bisque. I was standing in line checking out groceries and one of the magazines had corn featured as a key ingredient.
The magazine had multiple different types of corn soup. I believe they had at least five different variations of the soup, so looking at this, I knew I would have to dress my corn soup up. So next thought that crosses my mind is corn soup with spicy shrimp. The idea was fine, but didn’t completely satisfy me. The next thought after that was keep it classic with a corn crab bisque! And there it was born. Make a corn crab bisque for dinner.
I have a special appreciation for corn crab bisque. The dish in theory is extremely simple and it marries two very light and flavorful components. The fact that you can actually serve this as a standalone meal makes it even better. You usually think of soup needing a shoulder to lean on for dinner, like soup and salad or soup and a sandwich. With this soup, you can toast up some French bread and have a really good meal.
The first thing I want to address before I continue discussing this meal is the name. For the unfamiliar, a bisque is a rich soup made from shellfish. I am saying this now because throughout I may switch back and forth between the term soup and bisque and I don’t want any confusion.
The corn used in this recipe is fresh corn removed from the cob. If you have fresh crabs and want to remove the lump meat from them to make this soup, you can. In my time of cooking I have only used this method once before. I was able to get extremely lucky at a family seafood boil, some of the guys had brought so much crab that we were not even able to finish it. I was then able to bring home a huge cooler full of crab! That was a blessing to my taste buds, I made all kind of meals from the meat. If you happen to have a lot of left over crabs, use those.
If you don’t have whole crab available, you can purchase the crab lump meat on its own. When purchasing crab meat there may be a few types around. I know they have a canned crab version which I have yet to try, and they also have some that come fresh in a plastic container. I have heard good things about the canned version, I wish I could remember the name to share it with you. If you do use pre-picked crab meat make sure it is the lump meat instead of the claw meat. The two are completely different textures and the claw meat isn’t “meaty” enough to be filling like the lump meat is.
Remember, be patient while cooking and let the meal unfold!
