Crab placed inside the hard shell. One American way to prepare crab meat is by extracting it and adding varying amounts of binders, such as egg white, cracker meal, mayonnaise or mustard, creating a crab cake. Crabs can also be made into a bisque, a global dish of French origin which in its authentic form includes in the broth the pulverized shells of the shellfish from which it is made. Imitation crab, also called Surimi, is made from minced fish meat that is crafted and colored to resemble crab meat. While it is sometimes disdained among some elements of the culinary
Soft-shell crab main species is the blue crab, "Callinectes sapidus", which appears in markets from April to September. In the Deep South region of the United States, "Buster crab" is often a synonym for a plump, meaty soft-shell crab, this usage especially common in the culinary centers such as New Orleans and Charlotte. This is despite the fact that the original meaning of Buster crab referred to either a soft-shell that had yet to complete molting, or to a soft-shell that had died before being provided to a seafood vendor, and was then consumed by the crabber. In Japan, various species are