This authentic Venetian Crab Linguine, like all Italian food is simple flavours in an easy meal that tastes amazing.
I’ve been wanting to post this Crab Linguine recipe for nearly 2 years! Finally, the day has arrived and I’m super excited to share it with you.
In 2016, I married the love of my life and we went on a wonderful 4 week honeymoon visiting our favourite places – Italy and New York (oh and Dubrovnik for 3 days was a little added bonus in there too). Well one of my favourite cuisines is Italian food and my favourite place in the world is Venice, and that’s where I tried this amazing pasta dish.
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Beautiful Venice, beautiful food and a new book for the collection
We spent days just wandering that little city on the water and ate some amazing food. The one that was most memorable for me was this Crab Linguine that I tasted on our second day there. So much so that I hunted down an authentic Venice recipe book (as if I needed another cookbook to add to my collection) called ‘Venezia in cucina: The flavours of Venice’. I love the way it gives ingredients in both English and Italian. I read that book and marvelled at the beautiful pictures in the airport on the next leg of our journey.
The book has a recipe called Tagliolini with Spider Crab in it and that’s the exact recipe I’m sharing here today (except I reverted back to linguine).
Light on ingredients so make sure they’re good
Make sure to buy a good quality fresh linguine from your local and preferably not that sort of translucent dried stuff from the supermarket. Those pastas have their time and place but not when you have a recipe of only 6 ingredients. You’ll notice the difference in quality.
The sauce is sparse, not loaded like you see with a lot of pasta dishes but it has big flavour, as Italian food does. A little tomato, olive oil and garlic, mixed in with luscious chunks of crab meat are all you need. The flavour of the crab permeates the whole dish too so you end up with a very light coating of extremely richly flavoured sauce over delicate linguine.
And if you love a good pasta meal check out my Salmon Pasta with Pesto and my Authentic Ragu Bolognese.
An amazing and quick meal
This meal is quick to make. The original recipe calls for you to buy raw crab, cook it an then pick the meat. I ended up buying already cooked crabs to save on a little time and just picked the meat myself. That took about 20 minutes. It seriously took only 10 to cook it from then on.
This is such and amazing dish and if you’re a pasta lover like I am, I know you’ll love it. Perfect for a quick workday meal or save it for the weekend and have a bigger bowl with some crusty bread on the side.
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Interesting point; every time I type linguine I use a ‘q’ instead of ‘g’. Every. Single. Time.
What’s your favourite place in the world?
Have you tried this recipe? Rate it below or comment with any questions or thoughts.
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This authentic Venetian Crab Linguine, like all Italian food is simple flavours in an easy meal that tastes amazing.
- 2 cooked fresh spider crabs
- 450 g (1 pound) fresh egg linguine
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, chopped in half
- 1/2 cup (125ml) dry white wine
- salt and freshly cracked black pepper
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Start by picking the meat from the crabs, making sure to remove any small bits of shell.
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Place a saucepan of salty water over high heat and bring to the boil, then add your pasta.
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Place the oil and garlic to a frying pan over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, start stirring the garlic. Let it saute for about 1 minute.
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Add the wine and turn the heat up to high. Let it bubble away until the wine evaporates.
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Add the cherry tomatoes and saute for about 2 minutes, then add some salt and pepper to taste.
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Add one ladel full of the pasta water.
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By now the pasta should be al dente, so drain the water away and add the pasta to the crab and tomatoes. Give it all a good mix, test the seasoning and serve.
- I use a standard Australian 20ml tablespoon (4 teaspooons worldwide)
…and I’m the recipe developer, cook, photographer, and author behind Sugar Salt Magic. I’m also mum to 3 amazing fur babies and wife to the most amazing man in the world. Life is good. I love food and creating easy (mainly sweet) recipes that I can share with you. I’d love you to join along in my journey so sit back, relax and have a look around for some yum that you can feed your friends and family with. 
Ok, so when I get married I want a 4 week honeymoon now (never even thought of anything more than a week) and I want it In Italy with this Pasta!
Haha! It was quite indulgent but totally amazing
Although I like compound pasta dishes, there’s nothing better (most of the times) than simple things. You don’t need too many ingredients to enjoy good pasta – just garlic, herbs, olive oil…and apparently crab too 🙂 Never made crab pasta before, but now I’m intrigued!
It’s so delicious and it’s the simplicity that just takes me back there