Impressive Crab and Shrimp Pasta - Easy + Delicious

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• Introducing our crab and shrimp pasta
• An impressive pasta dish with easily sourced ingredients
• How to make the best crab and shrimp pasta
• What pasta to use
• Finishing touches to our crab and shrimp pasta
• More Italian-inspired seafood recipes on the blog
• Trending recipes on the blog
• Crab and shrimp pasta recipe

An impressive crab and shrimp pasta that is so quick and easy to make - definitely a crowd-pleaser all year round.

Introducing our crab and shrimp pasta

Pasta and seafood go hand in hand, whether you have classic seafood linguine adorned with succulent prawns and mussels in a tangy tomato sauce or a bowl of spaghetti with some crab and chilli stirred through, you can’t go wrong.

Creamy sauces with lemon and fresh herbs are everywhere in seafood pasta recipes but for our version of crab and shrimp pasta, we have gone for a little bit more substance.

This is not delicate, less is more style of seafood spaghetti, this is the version where more is more. We’re talking 50/50 crab meat where both the refined white flakes are mixed with the meaty brown paste, and a rich tomato sauce made with carrots, onions, celery and plump popping cherry tomatoes in a rich tangy sauce. All this is then hit with chilli, garlic, saffron (so this dish still is a bit rustic but doesn’t lose being refined) with sherry for sweetness and depth and last but certainly not least, some wonderful full flavoured potted brown shrimps. All cooked and brought together in beautiful fragrant fish stock, this is a crab and shrimp pasta that will definitely impress.

An impressive pasta dish with easily sourced ingredients

The ingredients in this crab and shrimp pasta dish are all easily sourced too. Most fish aisles in supermarkets will stock both crab meat and brown shrimp. They don’t come in particularly large containers and in fact, the potted shrimps often seem to come in very small pots with a price tag that looks as if it should be placed on something larger, but don’t let that fool you, these ingredients are full of flavour and go a long way. We are talking about a substantial meal after all and one with loads of flavour and texture. 100g of mixed crab and 100g of potted shrimp will flavour the rich tomato sauce perfectly enough for four people. Your fridge and pantry should have the rest of the ingredients as staples except perhaps for saffron, but yet again it is easily found in most good supermarkets in the herbs and spices section.

How to make the best crab and shrimp pasta

The sauce is started off with a basic mirepoix of diced carrot, red onion and celery. This is then just sweated down in some good olive oil until soft and glistening. As this dish is brought all together as one to the table it is a good idea to start cooking the sauce in the same dish that you will serve it in to avoid using too many pots and pans.

In Italy, the home of pasta, it is recommended that you always introduce the pasta to the sauce rather than the other way around, which is actually very helpful in saving the washing up. After about 4 minutes of gentle frying, the mirepoix will be ready to start bringing to life this gorgeous sauce.

First, add the sherry which will mingle all the flavours together and start bubbling away. Cream sherry is a nice choice as it adds a fair amount of deep rich sweetness, however, an oloroso sherry gives a more complex finish. It is the intrinsic flavour of the sherry we are looking for, whether sweet or dry, it all works in a savoury dish. This liquid then just soaks up all the flavours you are going to introduce into it. Next add the garlic, fish stock, cherry tomatoes with a bit of tomato purée for added intensity and saffron strands. Saffron is a luxury ingredient made from crocus stamens and possibly more expensive than gold for its weight. However, again this ingredient goes a long way and flavours the sauce with a refined floral note that partners with seafood perfectly. It also adds a golden hue to the redness of the tomatoes. We have used tinned cherry tomatoes in this dish rather than the normal passata as there is a sweet tang which has more umami flavour than passata and also the small tomatoes themselves add another texture to the finished sauce. 

At this point in the process before adding the final flourishes of crab and brown shrimp the sauce needs to reduce inconsistency which means gently simmering it for about 20 minutes. This is a perfect time to start cooking your pasta.

What pasta to use

When it comes to the pasta with this seafood, there are only a handful of types of pasta you would use. Obviously, if you were to make a seafood lasagne or lobster ravioli you would be using sheets of lasagne but generally, the only pasta you would use for a seafood dish like this would be in the form of long strands, the difference would be how thick the strands would be. Spaghetti is the thinnest followed by linguini then tagliatelle and perhaps pappardelle pasta as a thick ribbon which could be used. But there’s nothing better than the imagery of slurping up a long juicy lace of spaghetti just like in Lady and the Tramp. Very romantic, and of course this dish is exactly that.

All you need to do is bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, and we say salted, some Italian chefs say it needs to represent the sea itself, so don’t be shy with the salt. Once boiled, place the dried strands in the middle vertically, then twist them and let go so that they all fall perfectly in a circle around the pan. You could of course use fresh spaghetti but dried spaghetti is a store cupboard staple. The salt stops the strands from sticking together, but just make sure to give it a little stir every now and again. After about 9 minutes the spaghetti will be al-dente, slightly firm to the bite but cooked. Drain the pasta through a sieve but reserve some of the salty, starchy water left to add into the sauce to emulsify it. This is a trick of the trade and helps glisten a sauce once you have added the pasta.

Once the pasta has been cooked and drained making sure some of the water has been reserved, the sauce will be just about ready to finish off. Scrape in the mixed brown and white meat crab and small chopped red chilli and stir through the sauce. Adding the chilli right at the end keeps the small pieces to give a small intense spike of heat every now and again rather than diluting the heat throughout the whole dish. Simmer the sauce for another few minutes then add all of the spaghetti. Toss the spaghetti in the sauce. If you want to, add a few sprigs of fresh herbs and optionally a few cooked crab claws if you are feeling ostentatious, but it does add a bit more luxury if you are looking to impress.

Finishing touches to our crab and shrimp pasta

At this point add the potted brown shrimp. This will already be in clarified butter but when that melts on top of the pasta it looks amazing. The reason for putting the brown shrimps in right at the end is because they will cook to be hard in texture otherwise and also lose their flavour.

Add a tablespoon or two of the reserved pasta cooking water and toss through to help emulsify the sauce so that the whole bowl glistens when it arrives at the table. The last thing is to shave generous amounts of good Parmigiano Reggiano over the top. If Lady and the Tramp was re-written about cats, then this would certainly be the dish of choice they would suck up a strand of spaghetti with. 

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