Crab Mac Salad

As promised in my Hawaiian Scampi post, here is the recipe for my Crab Mac Salad.

 

Fantastically simple and yet so good, Mac Salad is a great compliment to Hawaiian Shrimp Scampi or any Hawaiian plate lunch meal.  

This version uses real crab meat, but you can use Krab meat (yes, that's crab with a K meaning it is an imitation crab product using fish).

OR, you don't even need to use any kind of protein at all if you don't want to.  

Here are the major players:

2 cups elbow macaroni (how much depends on how much you plan to eat/share/hoard)
mayo (oh how I love thee)
1 can white crab meat
onion (optional)
carrots (optional)
frozen hash brown (optional)
vinegar or vinegar based salad dressing
salt and pepper 

The only knife work needed for this recipe is to chop up any veggies or onion.  You don't have to add any veggies or onion, but I like that freshness and snap that fresh onion adds.  Having said that, I'm also not interested in large bites of raw onion so I super mince my onion for this dish.  This was about a quarter of a medium sized onion.  It's up to you and you can add as little or as much as you want.

Start boiling your water to cook your macaroni.  When your macaroni is ALMOST done, throw in a cup of frozen hash browns.  I like having some potato in my mac salad.  You can also throw in some shredded carrot if you want some veggies in your mac salad and it's up to you if you want the carrots semi-cooked or raw.  If you want them semi-cooked, throw them in now with your frozen hash browns.  If not, leave them for later and add them in when you are adding your pasta into your mayo.

After boiling your macaroni, drain off the water and while its still warm, add back into the pot you cooked it in.  At this point, add three heaping spoonfuls of vinegar or vinegar based salad dressing and toss around the macaroni to coat all your pasta with vinegar.

  I happen to adore this kind of salad dressing and use it for my mac salad:

 

Adding vinegar or vinegar based salad dressing adds a nice bit of acid into the mac salad and prevents it from being just overly creamy mayo salad.  I add it in while its warm because I like to believe it "sticks" onto the macaroni.  Whether that is true or not, I'll never know for sure.

In a large bowl, add your drained can of white crab meat 

(or chopped Krab meat, or chopped ham-yum ham). 

Add a generous amount of mayo.  I used about 3 heaping spoonfuls.  I like my mac salad moist but not overly mayo-ed (is that a word?)   You can always add more later if needed.

Add pepper and salt into your crab mayo mixture and the finely minced onion you chopped up earlier.  Add your vinegary macaroni pasta into the crab mayo mixture and mix away.

You can eat it now or refrigerate and serve later.  The macaroni will kind of absorb some of the mayo over time so you can always add more mayo if needed.  I like mine at room temperature so I eat it right away.

Oh.  Geste Shrimp Truck in Maui uses chopped black olives in their mac salad along with Krab.  I don't like black olives that much (green, yes.  Kalamata, yes.  black olives, no), but I liked it in their Krab Mac Salad.  But since I use real crab and don't want the olive to overshadow the crab flavor I didn't use it.  Feel free to add some if you want. 

Here it is with the Hawaiian Scampi and rice.  They make a happy trio.