Description
This is your one-stop shop for how to buy, cook, and pick blue crabs! Whether it's Maryland blue crabs (Chesapeake Bay Crabs) or the now-infamous Italian Granchio Blu, you'll find all you need to know right here. Blue crabs are delicious and can be boiled in just 5 minutes, or steamed in just 15-20 minutes.
Ingredients
- Fresh Italian Granchio Blu or Maryland Blue Crabs (4-6 medium to large crabs per person)
- 6 quarts of water (5 1/2 liters)
- 2 teaspoons Zatarain's Liquid Crab Boil (10g)
- 1 lemon, halved
- 1 1/2 tablespoons sea salt, or more or less to taste (25g)
- 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns (3g)
Instructions
How to Boil Blue Crabs (Granchio Blu)
- Rinse the blue crabs and keep them cool. Keeping crabs cool will create a low-stress environment and is the most humane way to cook live blue crabs.
- Bring a large pot of water to boil with aromatics. Add sea salt, lemon, black peppercorn, and Zatarain's liquid crab boil (or dry crab boil seasoning). *Skip adding anything but salt if you're a purist.
- Boil the crabs. Use a pair of tongs to add the crabs to the water (pincher arms furthest away from you) and cook for 5 minutes on steady simmer until the crabs are fully cooked and bright orange.
- Remove crabs from the water. Using the tongs or a spider strainer, remove the crabs to a 1/2 sheet pan and serve with melted butter. You may also sprinkle the cooked crabs liberally with Old Bay Seasoning before serving.
How to Steam Blue Crabs (Granchio Blu)
- Rinse the crabs.
- Submerge crabs for 2 to 3 minutes in ice water. This helps put live crabs "to sleep" creating a low-stress environment for them just before being steamed which is the most humane way to cook live blue crabs.
- Add steaming liquid to a large pot. Add 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5cm) of water or beer to a large pot with a little sea salt. You may also add a couple of tablespoons to 1/4 cup of white or apple cider vinegar if desired. *Skip adding anything but a couple of inches of water with salt if you're a crab meat purist, but don't be concerned about the crab meat tasting like beer or vinegar. Add a steaming rack like what you use for canning, or wad up some aluminum foil into balls and add them to the bottom of the pot. Do not let the crabs sit in the liquid or the meat can be poorly textured.
- Steam crabs for 10 to 20 minutes. Bring the liquid to a boil and layer the crabs on top of one another in the pot and cover with a lid. Steam crabs until they turn bright orange and are cooked through. This may only take 10 minutes for smaller blue crabs, and for medium to large blue crabs, it takes around 15-20 minutes.
- Remove crabs from the pot and serve.
Notes
- Depending on the size of your pot you'll be steaming crabs, add enough liquid (water or beer) to come up about 2 inches (5cm) from the bottom. You may also add 1 to 2 tablespoons (15-30g) of white or white wine vinegar to the pot. Don't worry, your crab meat will not taste like vinegar!
How To Pick Blue Crab (To Yield The Most Meat)
Using the right utensils to extract crab meat from the cooked crab shells is just one aspect of getting the most crab meat out of each blue crab. For this post, I boiled 18 blue crabs weighing a combined total of 3kg (6.6 pounds) and was able to yield 1 pound 10 1/2 ounces (751g) of blue crab meat! Typically, you should expect to get about 1 1/2 ounces to 2 ounces of crab meat per medium to large blue crab. Below is how I got such a high crab meat yield.
- Hold the cooked crab in your hand and twist off the arms with pinchers (claws).
- Next, remove the "apron" on the underside of the crab by using a knife or crab fork to lift it up and then pull it off.
- Remove the yellow and brown liver and pancreas (aka crab mustard or tomalley) from the apron (body cavity) by scooping it out using your hand or a spoon and discard.
- Remove the gills (aka dead man's fingers) and discard.
- Pull off all the small legs leaving the two flat flapper fins in place and put them in a pile.
- Pull out the flapper fins on either side of the cleaned body cavity to get the two pieces of lump crab meat out. This will be the sweetest and most tender meat on the crab. Then use the crab picker or fondue fork to pick out any remaining meat in the body cavity.
- Break the knuckles in the arms at each joint and use a crab mallet or seafood cracker to crack the shells and extract the meat. I find that when you crack the joints first, it allows the meat to be pulled out of the shells more easily and mostly in one piece. If you don't dislocate the joints first, crab meat can easily get stuck.
- Lastly, get as much meat out of the long portion of the small legs and knuckles as you can. You may want to skip this part, but in my opinion it's worth it to get this meat as well.
*See below for easy DIY tools you can use if you don't own crab utensils.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 5 minutes
- Category: Fish + Seafood
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 4 Blue Crabs
