Crab, lemon and chilli linguine recipe

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This crab, lemon and chilli linguine uses tinned crab meat to make a simple meal that feels like a special occasion. Perfect for summer weekends.

Crab, lemon and chilli linguine
  • healthy
  • Nut-free
  • healthy
Serves4
SkillEasy
Preparation Time5 mins
Cooking Time10 mins
Total Time15 mins
Cost RangeCheap
Nutrition Per PortionRDA
Calories490 Kcal25%
Fat14 g20%

A fresh, light pasta with a simple seafood sauce that's ready in the time it takes to cook the linguine.

The sauce for crab, lemon and chilli linguine only has five ingredients and the crab meat comes from tins, which means you can pretty much everything you need on hand and ready to go from your store cupboard. It's one of our simplest and quickest low calorie pasta recipes. The sauce is light and fresh - perfect for sunny weekend lunches or evening meals as the days get lighter. The lemon brings a real zest and vim to the dish, and brightens it up. Linguine is quite like spaghetti but rather than each strand being a perfect circle, they are flattened into an oval. This shape is popular with smooth light sauces like tomato, seafood and pesto because the sauces can really coat all of the strands of pasta.

Ingredients

  • 350g linguine
  • 2x170g tins crab meat in brine
  • 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
  • Zest and juice of 1 lemon
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 3 tbsp olive oil

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Method

  1. Cook the linguine in plenty of salted boiling water, until 'al dente' (before it gets soft). Drain and return to the pan.
  2. Meanwhile, tip the crab, with its brine, into a bowl. Stir in the remaining ingredients and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
  3. Stir the crab mixture into the drained pasta and return to a low heat, stirring gently, until most of the liquid has been absorbed by the pasta. Serve immediately.

Top tips for making crab, lemon and chilli linguine

This dish can also be made using tuna tinned in olive oil. Get the best tinned tuna you can afford - it really will make a difference to the end dish because it's so lightly cooked. And don't drain the fish, as the oil makes for a tastier sauce.

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Octavia Lillywhite
Food and Lifestyle Writer

Octavia Lillywhite is an award-winning food and lifestyle journalist with over 15 years of experience. With a passion for creating beautiful, tasty family meals that don’t use hundreds of ingredients or anything you have to source from obscure websites, she’s a champion of local and seasonal foods, using up leftovers and composting, which, she maintains, is probably the most important thing we all can do to protect the environment.