As the Corporate Chef for Newport International it is my job to be a resource of information for both our team and for our customers on our swimming crab meat and how to use it in a recipe. We offer a broad line of swimming crab in various forms, species, grades and price points. My goal is to work with our customers to find the best product for their specific needs. Many times they are shocked that I recommend a less expensive option from what they are currently using and I simply ask them to test it in their recipe. With a few adjustments to the recipe or the mixing/cooking process they can achieve a near match from a culinary standpoint with substantial cost savings that they can use to decrease their overall food cost or even lower the menu/sales price to increase overall volume of sales. With a variety of crab species and forms from our premium fresh pasteurized blue swimming crab to our value priced frozen crab we can find the perfect product for almost any dish and price point.
Over the years we have also developed many specialty items to address the specific needs of our customers. This could be a “crab cube” designed to meet the portion control needs of a food manufacturer or individually quick frozen (IQF) pieces of jumbo lump to be used in manufacturing crab cakes. Many times these items are specific to a certain customers, item or process and other times they have more widespread applications. I think our IQF falls into this category, beautiful whole pieces of crab which a lightly glazed before being quick frozen to protect the quality of the meat. These can be used from frozen and allow the crab to mixed without breaking.
A few months ago I worked with some samples of our IQF crab in a variety of applications and found great success with a little adjustment to the recipe or process. The end result is whole pieces of beautiful jumbo lump crab intact and unbroken in your finished product at a value price as compared with the traditional refrigerated product. As with all of our crab, the IQF will perform best in certain applications, it is our job to guide you towards the correct option. Please feel free to contact me and we can discuss your specific culinary needs and together we will the solution, my email is j.cantwell@newportintl.com.
