The Korean Staple Alton Brown Uses In His Crab Cakes

If you're a fan of Alton Brown, the TV show host, author, and food scientist, you know he's all about finding ways to improve dishes, whether it's by amping up flavors or finding easier methods to achieve the best cooking results. For instance, Brown suggests swapping rye for bourbon and adding bitters to your pecan pie recipe for a less cloyingly sweet result. Likewise, when it comes to enlivening traditional crab cakes, he suggests adding Korean kimchi for an Asian-influenced and spicy take on the seafood classic.

Kimchi is a traditional Korean staple dish made from salted and fermented vegetables. The red-tinted Baechu kimchi, which includes napa cabbage, scallions, garlic, fish sauce, and Korean chili flakes, is the most well-known variety. Brown doesn't specify the kind of kimchi he uses for his crab cakes, but Baechu is your best bet since it's the easiest to find and its flavors pair well with the rest of the crab cake ingredients. 

Kimchi adds a salty, spicy, and rich umami flavor to crab cakes. Just be sure to keep your crab cakes from falling apart while cooking by using the proper balance of wet and dry binders like breadcrumbs, eggs, and mayonnaise. One key practice to making this dish work is to finely chop the kimchi before using it in your favorite recipe since the cabbage and other veggies can be chunky or stringy depending on the variety. Also, because kimchi has a good amount of salt and spice, you may want to adjust the levels of both in the recipe to suit your taste. 

While most grocery stores now carry kimchi, if you can't find it near you or just want to make your own, we have an easy napa cabbage kimchi recipe. However, Brown says store-bought kimchi for this dish may be the way to go. "Mind you, it's delicious and relatively simple to make, but the truth is, the kimchi I buy at my local Korean market is way better than any I've ever made," he admitted in his 2016 cookbook "EveryDayCook." If you're looking to add a little Asian influence to your all-American crab cakes, we suggest you take Brown's advice and add Korea's go-to condiment.