The Dish: The only crab cake hack you need is at the Baltimore Farmers’ Market

It’s an open secret that most local crab cakes are made with meat from Venezuela and Indonesia. But let me let you in on another secret: It’s actually easy to find Maryland crab meat — and for cheaper than you think.

The city’s largest farmers market hosts a carnival of attractions that make visitors stop in their tracks: a man balancing Hula-Hoops on his head! Sea moss in a jar! Slices of yellow watermelon! But every Sunday, I make a beeline for the Lindy’s Seafood stand in the corner of the Baltimore Farmers’ Market below the Jones Falls Expressway. There, you can buy a pound of lump Maryland crab meat for just $22.

That’s a fraction of the price you’d expect to see at many grocery stores and online retailers. Cameron’s Seafood, for example, sells the same thing for $100 on Goldbelly, while Graul’s in Ruxton is now charging $40 for mixed lump.

That farmers market find means even amateur home cooks can indulge in Maryland’s signature dish. If you can make tuna salad, you can make a crab cake. Just take a pound of meat and add crumbled saltines, mustard, mayonnaise and, of course, Old Bay. Broil, bake or fry. A pound of crab meat will yield four to five decently sized cakes, which means you could end up paying less than $5 for an item that costs $20 or more in restaurants.

How does Lindy’s keep its crab prices so low despite the many threats faced by the local crabbing industry? I asked the company’s owner, Aubrey Vincent, who is based in Woolford, a town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. “We pick it ourselves,” she said, and then sell directly to consumers. “You’re making me feel like I should raise my price.” (Um, please don’t.)

But that’s the beauty of the farmers market, Vincent said. Customers can skip the grocery store and get their produce and meat straight from the source, often paying a lot less. It’s also educational. “Everybody eats but very few people understand where all the things they eat come from,” Vincent said. She’s formed relationships with regulars whom she sees week after week — and she’ll call to check in if they miss a week.

At the market, Vincent encourages customers to take note of the number on their crab containers, which is used to identify the worker who packed it. While Eastern Shore crab houses once relied mostly on Black women workers, today the few houses that remain mostly bring in laborers from overseas. The workforce at Lindy’s comes from central Mexico and stays in Maryland just for crab season, from April through November. Back home, Vincent said, they’re skilled at shucking corn for tamales, work that requires “a very similar hand motion” to the intricate work required to shell crabs.

If buyers find a particularly well-picked container — aka shell-free — diners can pass on their compliments (or complaints), Vincent said. I’ve bought crab from Lindy’s for several weeks and encountered a few small bits of shell each time, but what stood out was the richer flavor of the meat and its freshness. Imported meat is often consumed weeks after the crabs have been caught and packed, and can carry a fishy aftertaste.

In addition to its economical lump crab meat, Lindy’s offers containers of pricier jumbo lump, though I’m of the opinion that it’s not worth paying double for the same amount of food. They also sell local soft-shell crabs and hard crabs. Lindy’s offers shrimp, too, though it’s from the Gulf of Mexico, not Maryland — Vincent says the state’s fledgling shrimp industry still hasn’t gotten off the ground.

This season marks the third year Lindy’s has had a stand at the Baltimore Farmer’s Market and Bazaar, and Vincent says she’s become a huge fan who even sells to her fellow vendors. “I love the market,” she said. “The worst part is we have to wake up at 4:30 to get there.”

My husband’s go-to crab cake recipe

What’s easier than making your own crab cakes? Asking your husband to make them. My spouse follows this recipe, a modified version of one his mother found online, attributed to Faidley’s Seafood.

• 1 pound regular lump crab meat
• 1/3 cup mayo
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/3 cup crushed saltines
• Pepper and Old Bay to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, but do not overmix. Use your hands to mold the crab into four or five crab cakes. Put them in the refrigerator for an hour to set. Place them on a baking sheet or a cast-iron skillet and broil for 13 minutes.