Is Boiling Crab Healthy? (Healthy Boiling Crab Copycat Recipe)

Boiling crab is a popular seafood boil chain restaurant that I often went to in high school where you could order seafood by the pound, mixed with delicious cajun butter sauce and add in delicious add-ons such as corn, potatoes, and sweet potato fries. The mixture was so addicting and deliciously spicy that I couldn't help but try making this boiling crab copycat recipe. While boiling crab is undeniably yummy, is boiling crab healthy?

Boiling crab can be a very unhealthy dish given the high fat content of the sauce – although the dish consists predominantly of lean protein from the seafood, the sauce is extremely high in fats given that it is predominantly made of butter. A half pound serving of boiling crab with the classic whole shabang sauce can be up to is 700 calories, with about 47 grams of fat coming from the butter, 38 grams of protein, and 28 grams of carbs.

This is without counting additional carb heavy add-ons such as potatoes and corn. Thankfully, there are ways to tweak this recipe to make this low calorie and lower in fats, making this a dish you can easily enjoy without hindering progress towards your fitness goals.

Jump to:

• 🍎 Calories and Nutrition – Is Boiling Crab Healthy?
• 🍏 How to Make It Healthy – The Fitsian Method
• 💡Tips and Tricks
• 📋 Ingredient Notes
• 🔪 Step by Step Instructions
• 🍳 Recipe

🍎 Calories and Nutrition – Is Boiling Crab Healthy?

A traditional recipe of boiling crab can add up to 700 calories, mostly coming from fats in the butter based sauce, despite seeming to be a relatively healthy protein-based dish. Although the dish has a high protein content from the seafood (appoximately 38 grams for a half pound serving), most of the calories are coming from fats from the butter based sauce (47 grams). This is without taking into account any additional calories from the carb based add-ons, which can range from 100-400 additional calories. To understand the calorie and nutrition content of boiling crab, it’s useful to look at the core ingredients that make up boiling crab. Boiling crab is made of three main components: the seafood, the whole shabang sauce, and the add-ons

• Seafood: Boiling crab is often ordered with seafood by the pound, including but not limited to shrimp, crawfish, crab, and lobsters. All of these have a calorie content that is largely coming from protein, given that they are relatively lean protein sources. The seafood is an essential and healthy component of the dish.
• Whole Shabang Sauce: The sauce usually consists of a butter base, mixed with cajun seasoning, paprika, old bay, and various other spices. Although the spices do not add a significant amount of calories, the butter is pretty much a calorie bomb. Many recipes calls for multiple sticks of butter -- and each stick of butter is approximatley 400 calories largely from fats. While the sauce is definitley delicious, adding such a high amount of butter in the recipe is not ideal for those whose goal is to get fit.
• Add-Ons: Add-ons are a popular way to round out the meal given that the rest of the meal does not have much carbs. Popular add-ons can include fries, potatoes, corn, and rice. While carbs are an important part of our diet, I would recommend opting for carbs that are not fried and portioning them mindfully to keep overall calorie content low for the dish.

Looking at each component, it’s easy to see that the boiling crab recipe can easily be made to be a high calorie and high fat dish due to the sauce and the add-ons, making it less than ideal for dieting purposes. However, it’s not hard to make it low calorie and macro conscious — this recipe will show you some tweaks that will make boiling crab easy to fit into your everyday diet.

🍏 How to Make It Healthy – The Fitsian Method

In this recipe, I modified the sauce to be less heavy on the butter and portioned add-ons carefully to make it low calorie. A serving of the recipe ends up at 392 calories, with 38 grams of protein, 14 grams of fat, and 30 grams of carbs. Here are some key tweaks I made:

• Used 1 tablespoon of butter at only 100 calories
• Added shrimp stock or chicken stock to make the sauce closer to the desired texture (ie. more liquid-like)
• Portioned about ½ cup of corn for only 90 calories
• Used half a pound of shrimp for 160 calories largely from protein

For a detailed breakdown of each ingredients, their portioning, and how they make up the nutrition profile of this low calorie boiling crab recipe, you may refer to the table below:

💡Tips and Tricks

How do I portion each ingredients accurately?

Here are some key tools I would recommend for portioning ingredients:

• A kitchen scale is an essential tool in meal prepping and portioning each ingredient as accurately as possible. Guesstimating is not recommended, as it more often than not will lead to inaccurate tracking of calories and/or macros. Therefore, you can very easily end up way more calories than you thought you did, or way less protein than you thought you did. Kitchen scales can easily be purchased via Amazon and are very inexpensive so it's definitely worth getting one!
• Measuring spoons and cups are very useful for measuring out liquid ingredients. If you don't have these, you can always measure out the equivalent amount using a bowl on a kitchen scale and pouring the ingredient(s) out until you reach the desired portion.

How do I know how many shrimps to use?

Even though shrimp is a low calorie lean protein, portion control is still important. You can determine how many shrimps to use in yours by first determining what size shrimps you have available, then using the appropriate amount based on size using this guide on shrimp sizing . In this recipe, I used half a pound of size 31/35 shrimp, which is about 160 calories.

What other seafoods can I use?

This recipe would also be delicious with crawfish, crab meat, and/or lobster. I opted to use shrimp since it was one of the seafoods that are easier to work with. 

What about the other add-ons?

This recipe would also go well with a serving of brown rice or some roasted sweet potatoes.  A side of garlic noodles would also be a delicious side dish for this cajun shrimp. Just be sure to portion the add-ons mindfully to avoid adding too many additional calories. 

The sauce is drying up when I'm cooking it. What can I do?

You can deglaze the skillet by adding in shrimp stock. Shrimp stock is super easy to make as long as you have the shrimp shells and some water! If you are using peeled shrimp, you can also use chicken stock or water for this step.

If you liked this recipe, check out the below:

• Cajun Shrimp Carbonara -- A Delicious Healthy Pasta Recipe
• Cilantro Garlic Shrimp -- Another flavorful shrimp-based recipe with a delicious garlic-cilantro sauce
• Healthy Philz Mint Mojito -- For another copycat recipe on a popular iced coffee drink, made healthy
• Fast and Fit Recipe Collection --For more quick and healthy recipes 

📋 Ingredient Notes

Whole Shabang Sauce

• 1 tablespoon Butter
• 2 cloves Garlic
• ¼ Onion
• 2 teaspoon Cajun Seasoning
• 1 Bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon White pepper
• 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 2 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
• 1 teaspoon Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Smoked Paprika
• 1 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
• 1 teaspoon Black Pepper
• 1 tablespoon Hot sauce
• 1 cup Shrimp stock or chicken stock (Note: You do not need to use the whole thing, just pour in as needed to reach the desired consistency.)

Shrimp and Add-Ons

• 8oz Shrimp
• 1-2 Mushrooms (Sliced)
• ½ cup Corn
• Cilantro(For garnish)

🔪 Step by Step Instructions

1. First, we'll prepare the shrimp stock. You will need unpeeled shrimp to make this -- if you don't have, you can skip this step and use chicken stock or water instead. Begin by peeling the shrimp and adding the peels into a saucepan or stockpot. Add about 2 cups of water and bring to a boil, then let simmer for 5-10 minutes. Strain the shells off and set the shrimp stock aside.
2. Gather the sauce ingredients. Mince the garlic and slice the onions and slice the mushrooms. Add all the sauce ingredients except for the butter, vegetables, and stock into a bowl.

3. Melt the butter in a skillet and add in the minced garlic and onions. Cook until fragrant, or about 2-3 minutes.
4. Begin to add in the sauce mixture and the bay leaf and toast for about 1 minute.

5. Then begin to add in the shrimps in a single layer as well as the mushrooms and corn. Cook for about 1-2 minutes on each side, or until done. When the second side of the shrimp is cooking.

6. At this point, the sauce may being to look very dry -- simply deglaze the pan with the shrimp stock, chicken stock or water until it has reached a desired consistency. Don't forget to remove the bay leaf!
7. Sprinkle with lemon juice, remove from the pan, and garnish with cilantro. Enjoy your delicious low calorie boiling crab shrimp!

🍳 Recipe