Cheese Broils with Crab

It’s New Years’s Eve and we really whoop it up big around here! If whooping it up means eating appetizers for dinner, having a couple of cocktails, watching New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and nodding off around 11pm. Sometimes I make it up until midnight but Bob never, ever does so we try to toast to the new year in New York or Chicago depending on how perky we’re feeling. The one thing we seem to do without fail is to make my dad’s cheese broils with crab meat piled on top. He used to make dozens upon dozens of them for our annual Christmas Eve open house and they were always a crowd favorite. These days, our Christmas Eve is usually spent at my cousin Priscilla’s house with lots of great food but, alas, no cheese broils so I make them on New Year’s instead.

By the way, I have no idea where this recipe came from or who coined the sophisticated name “cheese broils”, I just know they taste really, really good and they are great with shrimp as well.

Cheers to a happy and peaceful 2013!

Cheese Broils with Crab

( makes about 10 slices)

1/2 cup onion, diced
4 cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 tablespoon mustard, Dijon or spicy brown
1/3 – 1/2 cup Greek yogurt, sour cream, or mayo
1 tablespoon Worcestershire
1/2 teaspoon prepared horseradish (in the jar)

a loaf of your favorite bread (I used Italian Pugliese)

12 ounces lump crab meat

Preheat oven on broil setting.

Chop onion, pretty small.

Saute on medium heat in a bit of oil until soft and just beginning to caramelize. Allow onions to cool while assembling other ingredients.

Place cheese in a medium/large bowl.

Add mustard, G. yogurt/sour cream (my dad used mayo, do what you need to do, I don’t do mayo in any circumstance), Worcestershire and horseradish.

Add onions and mix gently but thoroughly, a wooden spoon works nicely.

Slice your bread.

Spread a generous layer of the cheese mixture over bread.

Broil for 5 – 7 minutes, checking often, or until the cheese is bubbling and brown around the edges. Top with crab, cut in half or thirds and serve immediately.