We ate dinner last night at an upscale restaurant, and I had the house-special Breadless Crab Cake appetizer (which the waitress swore was free of all breadcrumbs, flour, and starches). I'm on a crab cake kick now, so tonight I tried out a recipe I've had for a while which uses crushed pork rind "crumbs".

I'd never actually eaten pork rinds before, and it turns out that I don't really care for them. That's a pity, as this recipe uses 3 oz crumbs and definitely has a pork-rindish taste to it. The sherry/mustard cream sauce I served with them didn't hide it all the way, either.

I'd like to find a substitute for the pork rind filler (other than low-carb bread crumbs). My thoughts so far are either finely crumbled hard-boiled eggs or finely chopped sauteed mushrooms. Anyone else ever tried anything like this?

Try finely ground TVP - textureized vegetable protein - the next time.

With enough crab that is well dried though, all you need is egg yolks or even better, a bit of mayonnaise

Karen

Thanks for the tip on TVP! I was wondering what I could use for stuffed cabbage and this would work very well!

Rainbow, by stuffed cabbage do you mean the whole stuffed cabbage or cabbage "rolls"

Just a hint, when I make cabbage rolls, instead of using rice in with the meat to keep the meat from going rock hard, I use the leftover cabbage. When you peel off the leaves for the rolls, there comes a point in the layers where the leaves are just too small or crinkly to use. I throw that in the food processor and chop it up fine, then mix that in with the meat.