Hot Crab Dip

So it turns out that my boyfriend and I are heading to San Francisco this weekend for a last-minute weekend away (business/pleasure for him, pleasure/pleasure for me). Although I couldn't be more excited to revisit the Bay Area after staying away for almost 15 years, my grand Superbowl party plans have been dashed. For the past few weeks, I've had nothing but football food on the mind, and I've tested quite a bit of recipes for possible inclusion in my now-defunct party menu. Ah well, there's always baseball in the spring (that is when their season starts, right?).

Rather than let all that effort go to waste, I'll be posting the greatest hits from my testing period here, starting with one of my favorites--hot crab dip. I love this dip. It's creamy and indulgent, a tad spicy, and peppered through with luscious chunks of fresh crab (you'll do well to buy the best crab meat you can find for this). Crab dip is a Southern thing--embarrassingly enough I first heard of it on the show Hart of Dixie, which takes place somewhere in Alabama. Not that I watch that show with any regularity or anything. Ahem. Anyway, it was the hit of a fictionalized football party on one of the episodes, and it sounded so good, that it got my curious little Google fingers going. I eventually found a recipe on Epicurious that looked like the perfect culmination of ingredients, and set about whipping it up one morning. And it was absolutely delicious. I ended up polishing off most of it on my own along with a full bag of crunchy kettle-cooked potato chips. Whoops. xo

Hot Crab Dip
Ingredients:
One 4-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1/2 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning or other seasoned salt
6 ounces fresh or canned lump crabmeat, drained

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Place all the ingredients except the crab in a medium bowl and blend together with a spatula. Stir in the crab. Turn the dip into a 1-quart casserole and bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes, or until heated through.