YPDIW: Crab
Crab is a wonderfully sweet, meaty treat that gets especially good if you live near the US coastlines. Since crab is a bit on the pricey side, it is worth knowing how to properly eat it at home, so today I’ll be giving some helpful tips and guidelines so you can get the most out of your crab legs.
I have seen way too many people that portion of the body that connects the crab legs, people will break off the legs and just push the knuckles and portion of the body to the side when the truth is that there’s good meat within the body.
In fact, some people argue that the body meat is the best part of the whole crab.
One of the biggest, and most common, mistakes that people make when eating crab at home is using the wrong tools, they may grab an ordinary hammer and a dinner fork.
So, what they end up doing is taking their hammer and just whacking away at the crab, but that ends up breaking up the shell into tiny pieces, thus increasing the chance of eating bits of the shell. Even worse is that the dinner fork is just too large for the delicate crab meat, so they end up shredding the meat.
What you end up with is shreds of crab meat, likely with bits of shell studded throughout, and you don’t end up utilizing all of the delicious meat that crab has to offer.
Now, I’m going to show you the right way to cook and eat crab leg clusters.
When shopping for pre-cooked snow crab clusters, take a good look at them. Make sure none of the leg segments are missing, make sure there are no barnacles or blemishes, and if possible, ask your fish monger or whoever you’re buying your crab from to let you smell the crab legs. If there is no lingering odor, then you know that the crab is fresh and ready to eat.
To cook, there’s not much you need to do, just load the crab legs into a steamer basket; they should take 4-5 minutes to steam. If you don’t have a steamer basket, then what you can do is place the crab legs directly into a pot with about an inch of water and it’ll steam perfectly.
Now, it’s time to tackle that crab. The only tools you’re going to need is a cracker and, if you have one, an oyster fork.
I like to start with the body, and the way I do this is by snapping off the legs and claws. Within the body are these cavities and pockets of meat and you’ll need to dig around and pull them apart to find them, you can then use your fork to dig that meat out so you can get it right into your waiting melted butter.
As for the legs, you’ll want to start by grabbing two sections of the legs, then twisting a bit until you can pull it out, when doing that you should notice plates and tendons being pulled out, those are not pleasant to eat.
From there, you can take your crab cracker (Yes, I know I’m using a nut cracker, it’s just a demonstration.) to crack the shell around the legs until you can pull the meat out. If you’re lucky, the meat should pull out in one piece, but if not then you can dig your oyster fork in there and get that meat right out.
Although, with snow crab legs, the shell around the legs is so thin that you can also just bend them until the shell snaps.
Now the claws might seem daunting, but they’re actually quite simple.
What you do is grab the thinner lower point of the claw and pull it back until it snaps off. Then, just like with the legs, you can use your cracker to snap the shell and carefully pull out the meat.
Eating crab is as much about having fun as it is eating a delicious crustacean, so play around with it. It might be one of the only times as an adult that you’ll be allowed to play with your food as you eat it and not get any weird looks.
If you’ve done everything right, then you’ll get the most out of your crab legs, have a pleasant experience doing so, and, most importantly, you’ll get your money’s worth.
