My mother’s preferred seafood dish is known as gratinée and is known as seafood au gratin. It’s also my all-time favorite seafood recipe; she’s now 88 and I’m 60. I’ve had diners ask me especially to serve them this.
| Prep Time: | 25 mins |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 25 mins |
| Servings: | 8 |
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, divided
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 green bell pepper, chopped
- 1 cup all-purpose flour, divided
- 1 pound fresh crabmeat
- 4 cups water
- 1 pound fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
- ½ pound small scallops
- ½ pound flounder fillets
- 3 cups milk
- 1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
- 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 pinch ground black pepper
- 1 dash hot pepper sauce
- ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Melt 1/2 cup butter in a heavy skillet. Add onion and bell pepper; sauté until tender. Mix in 1/2 cup flour and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in crabmeat, remove from the heat, and set aside.
- In a large Dutch oven, bring water to a boil. Add shrimp, scallops, and flounder; simmer for 3 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup cooking liquid. Set seafood aside.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease one 9×13-inch baking dish.
- In a heavy saucepan, melt remaining 1/2 cup butter over low heat. Stir in remaining 1/2 cup flour; cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Gradually add milk plus 1 cup reserved cooking liquid. Increase the heat to medium and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is thickened and bubbly. Mix in Cheddar, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Stir in cooked seafood.
- Press crabmeat mixture into the bottom of the prepared baking dish to form a crust. Spoon seafood mixture over crust and sprinkle with Parmesan.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until lightly browned. Serve immediately.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 566 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 20 g |
| Cholesterol | 233 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 43 g |
| Saturated Fat | 21 g |
| Sodium | 859 mg |
| Sugars | 6 g |
| Fat | 34 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
This was just delicious. I have been trying to replicate a dish I had on the east coast and this is the closest I have ever made at home.
Loved it! It could be improved, I think, if the bottom crab “crust” was actually a bit crispy (like a crust). I’m wondering if baking it with just the crust before adding the creamy seafood filling might do the trick? I’ll definitely be making this again.
I made this for Christmas Eve dinner and it was a hit!! It was very rich and very filling. But the dish was beautiful also. Everyone was impressed with my cooking and the dish was not hard to make at all.
After reading other reviews I decided to change the recipe in this way: added 2 cups seafood broth instead of plain water when cooking the shrimp and scallops and kept 2 cups for the sauce, added only 2 cups of milk, I only used shrimps, scallops and crabmeat, added more seasonings to taste, used Monterey Jack cheese and it was really good. I’ve always been afraid to cook seafood because it’s too expensive to make if you mess up somehow on the recipe. This baked seafood was like eating at an upscale restaurant. I put it over rice, but decided it’s going to be better with angel hair pasta. $50 for the seafood alone, but worth it in the end. One last thing – prep for this meal is well over 20 mins.
We made it exactly like the recipes says. It was fantastic, a keeper for sure. One of my top 5 of all time.
Rarely do I give anything a perfect score. So, a four star rating is suburb in my book. Easy enough to make and welcomed by my most critical of family members, my son who “hates everything”. Excellent!
Excellent. It is rich and served it with French bread to soak up the delicious sauce.
It was delicious, the only thing I will do next time is bump up the spices a little.
Amazing! Everyone loved it however very pricey to make. I added 1/4 fresh lemon (great with lemon pepper) I also slightly reduced the amount of flour I added to the milk. I served it with angel hair pasta. Garlic bread a small salad. Wow!
I made this recipe last night, following it closely. Being in the Bay of Fundy, and having a fisherman to please, I used local seafood- Canadian hard shell lobster, halibut and scallops. This recipe didn’t disappoint! I will make this again, using left over seafood – yes, it happens. The next time I will omit the cheddar and up the parmesan and double the amount of sauce
I don’t know if I liked the bottom crab crust, but the rest of the recipe was pretty good. Reminded me of one our favourite seafood dips at a local restaurant, but even more decadent. It was creamy and cheesy. I served it with some buttered noodles on the side.
This was very good. I didn’t have the crab meat but everything else was just as written. I will be making this again, Thanks for a tasty recipe.
This dish is excellent for a celebratory dinner–like New Year’s Eve. The seafood is expensive if you buy fresh. The flavor is very delicate from the butter and seafood. However, I changed the cheese to Manchego before I even tried it because I did not want to use yellow cheddar. I bought pre-cooked shrimp and clam so I used Zataran’s Crab Boil in the water for flavor but saw some other excellent substitutions in the review section. My sauce looks a bit thin (I don’t want to overcook the seafood) so I will serve over pasta or biscuits. The key is to know how to make a good roux: undercooked is runny and overcooked is pasty. The liquid should be hot when added or the flour will not thicken. This recipe is a keeper.
Tasty as heck, but soupier than I expected. I think I’ll add some thickener to the liquid next time before I assmble the dish.
Came out GREAT!!! Made it for a fancy Sunday dinner & had everyone going back in for seconds. Was so rich and flavorful…I highly recommend 🙂 Obviously is a little pricey due to all the seafood used, but well spent. YUM!
instant family favorite!
Wow. What a special meal this was for my sister’s 50th birthday dinner celebration. EVERYONE loved it… Served it over angelhair pasta and with a tossed salad, warm biscuits, and acorn squash as a side. 8 of us were full afterwards, (Had to leave room for birthday cake!)and there was enough left over for 4 lunches the next day. Not a meal we’ll make frequently because of the cost, but for special occasions, definitely…
Freaking good! Made it over white rice & it was to die for…especially if you love seafood!
Seafood part of recipe was great, but the sauce tasted and looked like wallpaper paste, very bland. Too much flour in roux. If I made this again, I would cut the flour for the roux down to a couple of tablespoons, NOT 1/2 cup! Could not taste the Worcestershire sauce or the hot sauce at all.
Great dish! I left out the salt, hot sauce, shrimp, and scallops per diet requirements for the household. I added 1lb immitation crab (polluck) with the flounder and it turned out very tasty. The changes saved $s and this is a great recipe for a low salt diet.
Wow, just made this and it’s a keeper- I used red pepper instead of green and I used grated Velveeta for the cheese- YUM!