First of all, you have to use BACKFIN lump. Just regular ol' lump won't do.
Next, it's not breadcrumbs, it has to be cracker meal.
After that, mayo, lemon juice, Old bay, and some capers (just a few for color).
Never mix so hard that you shred the lumps. The cakes should nearly fall apart because the lumps are too big and the "glue" is too little.
Form the cakes and let them set-up in the fridge for at least 12 hours.
Pan fry or broil til golden brown.
No, no, no, you're a little mixed up.
Backfin = the small pieces of the crab.
Jumbo Lump = the big chunks of the crab.
Backfin Lump = the small pieces of the crab, with a few pieces of the Jumbo Lump thrown in for good measure (normally on the top of the can to make the presentation look better). Sometimes it's on the top and bottom of the can. Each packing house has it's own way of doing things. Some packing houses also label the Backfin as Lump, just to be able to sell it at a higher price, even though it's still Backfin.
And any of these will do. It all tastes the same, it came from the same crab. The Backfin will obviously be cheaper, and most of the time, if you go to a restaurant, this is what you're getting. The higher end restaurants may also throw some Jumbo Lump in there, so they can claim it's "filled with Jumbo Lump", and oftentimes, they'll even mix it with a little foreign crab meat, and I have to admit, it can be hard to tell the difference when it's mixed. Serious crab restaurants will offer you a Jumbo Lump crab cake (at a higher price of course).
You can use either crumbled crackers, cracker meal OR breadcrumbs. Doesn't really matter too much, since you'll use the smallest amount of this ingredient possible. Just enough to hold it together, and not a bit more. You don't pay all that money for crab meat, just to blot out the taste with bread or crackers.
Your confusion may stem from the "old way" things used to be done.
There used to be two types of meat.
Special, the little pieces. And Backfin, which are the lump chunks.
Then someone came up with the idea of calling the Backfin "Lump" to make it seem like their product was inferior. So everyone else started doing the same thing.
So it was Special, and Lump. Then, to add diversity, someone started topping off the Special with pieces of Lump, and called it Backfin. Once one factory did it, so did the rest.
And it's changed again. They've phased out the Special meat, you'll rarely ever see that at all. Backfin is the new Special. Jumbo Lump is the new Backfin.
As far as letting them sit in the fridge, I never do this. I don't know anyone local that does it either.
One other thing to keep an eye on. Pacific Rim. If you go to Outback or other restaurants, they have Pacific Rim crab cakes. That just means the crab meat came from the Pacific Rim ie China, Indonesia, wherever, but not here. It's not even the same crab that we have in our local waters. It has a different texture and taste.
To the OP: Whole Foods is a good choice to buy crab meat from. They like to buy the best REAL crab meat they can find, not the foreign stuff. I've actually had a call from Whole Foods, hoping they could purchase our product, but since they called in the winter, I was not able to help them because our factory shuts down in December and doesn't reopen until April (Maryland crab regulations, plus higher priced crabs makes it difficult to work all year).
Also, a Public Service Announcement: Look for crab meat prices to be a little higher this year. I know it's already expensive, but many crab processing plants won't be working this year. There is a political reason for this, and it's hard to explain without giving tons of details and background. But just to let you know, only 1 crab plant in Virginia was approved for their H2B workers, 1 in North Carolina was approved, but the rest in those states were denied, as well as most applicants in the southern states, like Louisiana and Mississippi.
The Maryland crab houses were all approved, which goes to show how the Maryland crab industry is serious about crabs, and they'll make sure they do anything they have to to keep their businesses running.
So, a bit of advice concerning this PSA: buy crabs, pick them yourselves, and you will save a lot of money.
