Super Easy Crab Rangoon

Tags

appetizer, crab, Crab Rangoon, cream cheese, easy, entertaining, food, fried, hosting, party, rangoon, recipies, seafood

Crab Rangoon is one of the simplest appetizers to whip up. There are many variations and everyone has their favorite style. I’m going to share a super simple recipe and method made especially easy for kitchen novices.
Start out by softening two 8oz blocks of cream cheese and thaw if need be about 8oz of cooked (or imitation) crab meat. Everyone likes their Rangoon spiced differently so play with it a little if you find something you might like or if you dislike something on my list. I suggest white pepper, ground celery seed, garlic powder, chili powder and salt. You don’t need much. Maybe a half a teaspoon or so of each depending on your tastes.

Just put it all in a bowl and mix it up with a fork. Simple.

Now the part that makes this super easy is the part that people often stress over… the folding of the wrapper. There are a billion ways to fold a wonton or egg roll wrapper. My family has a tendency to eat the innards and leave behind the crispy tails that stand alone with no filling. My answer to this is to fold the wrappers into envelop shapes around the filling eliminating the uneaten bits left about. I use egg roll wrappers. They’re larger and easier to handle. Simple steps for folding in the next pics…

Start out by laying your wrapper in a diamond shape so that the bottom is a corner facing you. Scoop up a blop of filling and place it near the center of the wrapper a little closer to you than the center. Like so…

Set a small dish of water nearby for sealing up the edges. Next, fold up the corners like so…

Now you’ll use that water to seal up the edges. Simply dip your finger into the water and run it along the top corner of the wrap.

Then fold it over to seal. Viola!

Make 3 or 4 of these at a time and drop em in hot oil til they’re just about golden. I do them in batches, but if you have a large deep fryer or something that’ll handle more, go for it. They should come out looking like this…

Perfect little packages made especially for dippin’.

Use your favorite sweet n sour sauce. I might just have to do a blog post on sauces. Hmmmm

You could get crazy and make your own wrappers, but if you’re like me ya just can’t get them quite thin enough. Mine come out like this…

But that’s another post as well. I’ll leave you with a picture of these Easy Crab Rangoon… Believe me, if I could leave you with a taste or even a smell I would. 😉

Try the envelop method and tell me what you think.

Enjoy!

Scallops n Shrimp Alfredo

Tags

alfredo, butter, pasta, recipies, scallops, seafood, shrimp, white sauce

Some of the simplest types of dishes to make are the “one-pot-wonders”… the meals you don’t have to dirty up a bunch of pots n pans and keep track of different things cooking at different times. This just happens to be one of those types of meals. Well probably not usually, but I have a tendency to make things simple 😉

Start out by cooking some pasta. Whatever kind you enjoy. Strain it and leave it in the strainer. Use the same pot you cooked the pasta in to melt some butter (maybe half a stick or so). Add a little olive oil to the butter, and your favorite spices. I used garlic (I always use garlic), ground celery seed, salt, pepper, a tiny bit of minced onion and a tiny bit of paprika.

Now toss in a handful or three of thawed scallops and just as much shrimp. These don’t take long to cook so as soon as you see them turning a bit white (rather than the kind of clear look they have) and the shrimp don’t look so “pink”… you’re ’bout done with em.

They should look about like this.

Take the scallops n shrimp out of the pot. You can put em right on top of the pasta while they wait. Save all that good stuff in the pot though.

Scoop out the solid goodies. Save the liquid goodies.

Just set em on the noodles. I mean, why dirty a dish when it’s all goin back in the pot?

Now is the time to throw more butter into that pot. Like at least another half a stick. Pour in some heavy cream. I probably used about a cup or so. [Can you tell I don’t measure stuff?] Add about a half to two-thirds of a cup of milk. Just to give it more liquid, but ya don’t want to ‘water’ it down.

ok, maybe some more butter

So I decided to add some more butter. Hey, that’s ok. Whatever.

Once all that extra butter (’cause I’m crazy) melts you can start adding the cheese/es. I used mostly parm, but I also added a little colby n cheddar to mix things up a bit. Do it however you like, but I highly recommend the parm. Lots of it.

Probably a good 5 or 6 oz of cheese. Stir it while it melts a bit to keep it from clumping or sticking. You’re almost done!

Ready? Throw all the noodles n seafood back in the pot. (Wait. Don’t “throw”. It’s hot. Safely slide.) Now mix it all up an voila! Yum.

My Hubs likes salt waaay more than I do, so salt n pepper it from this point however you like. If you think it looks a little plain you can garnish it with some greenery. Pretty much anything will work. Not mint. Don’t do mint. Parsley works.

What do you think? Was that simple enough? Fill me in with a little feedback. Thanks.