Excite your guests this Thanksgiving with a new menu, a seafood-themed dining experience! Seafood is wonderfully versatile, making its culinary inclusion into your Thanksgiving meal easy, delicious, and positively memorable.
Why should you incorporate seafood into your holiday meal?
~The first Thanksgivings were likely maritime affairs, with fish and shellfish featured prominently on the menu. Honor tradition with a more historically accurate seafood-themed meal.
~Less likely for your guests to snooze after feasting! Seafood contains less tryptophan than poultry. Keep the festivities going longer with dishes containing fish and shellfish.
~Variety is the spice of life! Seafood offers a refreshing contrast to our modern Thanksgiving meals, providing enticingly new offerings for your guests.
~Dishes containing crab, lobster, salmon, shrimp, and scallops can add an elegant, gourmet, and sophisticated flair to the holiday table. Seafood is always dressed to impress.
Main Dish Ideas
Leave the turkey at the grocery store and try one of these main dish ideas as the showpiece for your Thanksgiving meal (these dishes definitely don’t take hours to make–bonus!).
Atlantic Salmon Wellington
Most of us have had a beef wellington…but…have you ever tried a salmon wellington? The concept is the same. An eye-appealing crisp, golden brown pastry crust conceals a perfectly baked salmon fillet surrounded by tender mushrooms and tantalizing aromatics (complete with a tangy, creamy horseradish sauce). Enjoy the rich, buttery flavor and tender texture of our Atlantic Salmon, sustainably sourced from the clean, cold waters of the North Atlantic. Known for its delicate yet robust taste, this premium salmon is perfect for your Thanksgiving table.
Baked Stuffed Lobster with Lemon-Garlic Butter
Lobsters are always an impressive main dish—Thanksgiving included. If you choose to go sans-turkey this year, opt-in for baked stuffed lobster. We love stuffing whole lobsters or lobster tails with our Jumbo Lump Crab Cake mix. It is a deliciously easy meal to make and the combination of crab and lobster is always a hit. Check out our Seafood Stuffer Guide for tips, tricks, and recipes. Our mail order steamed Maine lobsters are a true delicacy with rich white meat and a sweet sea flavor. Maine lobsters are perfect for any holiday gathering.
Pan-Seared Rockfish with Pontchartrain Sauce
The Chesapeake Bay’s Striped Bass, also known as Rockfish, is a local specialty. We carry the highest quality Maryland Rockfish that we catch, filet, and portion to order. Rockfish is a wonderfully meaty white fish with a mild, sweet-tasting flavor that sears perfectly for an easy Thanksgiving main. When paired with the shrimp-studded, Madeira-spiked, creamy Pontchartrain Sauce (a Cajun speciality), your guests are gonna forget all about turkey.
Easy Mode: Thanksgiving Main Dish Options
Looking for a less labor intensive main dish option for your Thanksgiving table? We recommend serving Crab Legs! We have a trio of crab leg options to choose from, each offering a stunning, delicious, and easy-to-reheat alternative.
Side Dish Ideas
These are seafood-infused twists on the classic Thanksgiving sides, each providing a new and deliciously creative alternative.
Crab Dip Mashed Potatoes
Cameron’s Jumbo Lump Maryland Crab Meat laced mashed potatoes, what could be better? This creamy, cheesy, crabby and unique mashed potatoes recipe will be the star of your holiday dinner table (move over turkey). Traditional Maryland Crab Dip is gently folded into the mash before being topped with cheese and baked bubbly and golden brown. The creaminess of this Maryland crab dip mashed potatoes recipe comes from both the cream cheese and the sour cream, creating a rich flavor that doesn’t overpower the crab. Get the recipe, here, on our website!
Maryland Crab Stuffing
Mmmmmm…stuffing. The best Thanksgiving side dish (in my humble opinion) and made even better by adding Cameron’s Lump Maryland Crab Meat. This seafood stuffing recipe takes the traditional cornbread style stuffing and adds sweet lump crab meat lightly flavored with Maryland-style seafood seasoning. This crab stuffing recipe is the epitome of homestyle Maryland Thanksgiving cooking. Click this link to check out this satisfying stuffing recipe!
Fall Crab Cake Salad
This salad combines that sweet, buttery element of jumbo lump crab cakes with the rustic elegance of fall produce. The salad dressing is a play on Dijonnaise, adding a little seasonal apple cider and apple cider vinegar to the mix for sweet-tart palate play. The butternut squash and crab cakes can be baked together, making prep a breeze. This salad is a great option for a lighter Thanksgiving side dish. Check out the recipe here.
Easy Mode: Thanksgiving Side Dish Options
Need to cut down on your Thanksgiving prep time? Or, are you looking for an impressive first course introduction to your seafood-fueled holiday meal? Serve soup! We have a trio of classic seafood soups that will fit perfectly into your menu; Crab Meat Bisque, Crab Gumbo or Lobster Bisque!
Appetizer Ideas
Give your guests a taste of what's to come with one of these appetizer ideas. Each are crafted using the highest quality seafood for maximum flavor and freshness.
Seafood Charcuterie
It’s the most snackable time of the year! The holidays are meant for tasty treats and scrumptious appetizers and none are more delicious than seafood themed charcuterie platters. Chefs have been flexing and expanding their charcuterie options by switching out the pork for better-for-you seafood. Even more palatable for the home cook, it’s easy to make! Check out our DIY Seafood Charcuterie Board here.
Blue Crab Cocktail
We’ve all heard of the shrimp cocktail… but… Maryland has it’s own take on the popular appetizer, the Blue Crab Cocktail. This flavorful starter will pique palates with a sweet, savory, and zesty combination of ingredients. Perfect for fancier Thanksgiving passed hors devours or as an impressive addition to an appetizer spread. Our fresh Jumbo Lump Maryland Blue Crab Meat is picked from the Maryland Blue Crabs caught in the Chesapeake Bay. This crab meat is perfect for your holiday appetizers. Click here for the recipe.
Mini Lobster Rolls
In this article, we feature two lobster roll options; butter-based and mayo-based. We find that both make for mouth-watering Thanksgiving appetizers. Cold water lobster tails and lobster meat are a huge favorite among seafood lovers! Cold water lobster tails and lobster meat are enjoyed for their light flavor and tender meat. Our lobsters come from the lobster capital of the USA, Maine! Maine cold-water lobster tails are the best lobster available on the market!
Easy Mode: Thanksgiving Appetizer Options
We have two appetizer options that will fit perfectly into your busy Thanksgiving meal prep schedule! Our Maryland Crab Dip and our Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail! The shrimp cocktail comes fully cooked and seasoned and the crab dip is ready-made and easy to bake!
Homemade or Semi-Homemade, Cameron’s Seafood has you covered this Thanksgiving!
Infuse some seafood into your Thanksgiving menu this holiday season. Whether you’ll be trying out one of our seafood-themed ideas or creating an entirely new spread, we have quite the collection available at our online store. Crab cakes, crab meat, fresh fish, shrimp, and lobsters-oh my! Kick off the holidays with fantastic seafood, shipped right to your door.
Do you have a Thanksgiving seafood recipe that you’d like to share with us? We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to use our seafood. Post your images or recipes on any of our social pages. We can be found @cameronsseafoodonline on Instagram or @CameronsSeafood on Facebook.
