Should I dilute the butter a bit with a little water? Also, anyone have success with simmering imitation crab legs in butter to make it more realistic?
Should I dilute the butter a bit with a little water? Also, anyone have success with simmering imitation crab legs in butter to make it more realistic?
If you have enough water in with the butter to actually simmer instead of fry, the butter won’t do very much during the cooking process. Water boils at 100 C, and the boiling will stabilise the temperature at 100 C and prevent it from climbing higher. A frying or saute process doesn’t have the water, and the temperatures can go much higher than 100 C.
The normal seafood boil recipe is no fat in the water, but do add a lot of seasoning to the water. Add a lot more seasoning to the water than you would normally add directly to the food.
Then for the boil, only boil the seafood for a short time, 1-2 minutes. Then turn the heat off, cover, and steep the seafood in the over-seasoned water like tea, until done. This gives the food more contact time to infuse with the seasoning without overcooking.
I’m trying to infuse butter flavour into the ingredients rather than fry
The main flavour components of butter are not going to infuse through water. If you want to add butter flavour to the final product, it would be better to baste the food in melted butter after it Congress out of the pot.
Would it taste fine if I steam it all then toss it quick in the butter old bay?
The seasoning will all be on the outside, so it won’t season crab leg meat for example. It will also be a stronger, sharper contrast to the ingredients which may or may not work for you.