Awesome Spaghetti & Crabmeat

Spaghetti and crabmeat is one of those Italian-American restaurant dishes that feels showy but cooks like an everyday weeknight pasta. The base is a slow-simmered marinara built on onion, celery, garlic, and parsley sweated in olive oil until golden, then enriched with tomatoes and a splash of Spanish sherry that gives the sauce its restaurant-style depth.

Sweet lump crabmeat goes in only at the end, joining the sauce for just ten minutes so it warms through without losing its delicate texture. This is a critical move. Crab cooked too long turns rubbery and stringy, but a quick simmer keeps every flake intact and lets the briny sweetness perfume the whole pot.

Serve it over angel hair, which catches the sauce in its fine strands the way thicker pasta can’t. The directions are firm on one detail worth following: do not rinse the cooked pasta. The starch on the noodles helps the sauce cling. Finish with a snowstorm of fresh Parmesan and serve hot.

Pro Tips

• Pick through the crabmeat by hand for shell fragments before adding it to the sauce. A single shell shard ruins a forkful.
• Use real Spanish sherry (oloroso or amontillado), not cooking sherry. The latter is overly salty and lacks the nutty wine character.
• Simmer the sauce at least an hour, longer if you can. The tomato acidity mellows and the sauce gains body and depth that a short cook can’t match.
• Salt the pasta water aggressively. Properly seasoned pasta is half the flavor of the finished dish.

Variations

• Add a pinch of red pepper flakes with the garlic for a fra diavolo-style spicy version.
• Stir in a tablespoon of butter at the end of cooking for a glossy, richer finish.
• Substitute lobster meat or shrimp for the crab if your fish counter has good fresh seafood.