If you’ve ever wanted to experience the southern way of eating crab, start with Maryland Blue Crabs. Their taste and quality is unmatched in  my opinion. Add some traditional Old Bay Seasoning or and melted butter and it’s absolute heaven. 

Normally you will buy blue crabs by the bushel from a local fisherman. I believe there are places that will ship to neighboring states, but you’re talking high dollars for a few crabs, because the crabs really need to be live when you put them in the pot to cook them. We recently went to the Northern Neck in North Carolina and purchased 2 bushels of Maryland Blue Crab for the current market price which was $100 per bushel at the time (this was in 2007). Prices will vary depending on the current crab harvest numbers and the season.

How many crabs are in a bushel? This depends on the size and volume of the crabs. At the top of my page, there is a picture of a bushel of crab. Normally a bushel is around 6 dozen crabs but again it will depend on the volume of the crabs fitting into the basket.

Ok so now you’ve bought your crab and you’ve received your bushel of bubbling, live, mean little creatures. Make sure that you have some gloves handy as well as some very long tongs because you’ll need these to transfer the crabs into the pot. Also have some assistants to help you hold down the lid in case one of the crabs escapes and you end up chasing down a stray away crab

Be sure to have your crab pot ready. You should have several large pots on your stove (or you can cook them on a pot atop an outdoor flame). Place a small wire rack in the bottom of the pot to keep the crabs out of the water. You are not going to boil the crab - you will be steaming them.

Now lift the lid and very carefully take your tongs and lift up the crab from the bushel basket into the pot on your stove. Sprinkle Old Bay Seasoning (this is the BEST SEASONING for crab) onto the crab, using more or less depending on your taste preference. Add 1/2 cup of vinegar and 1/2 cup of beer (optional).  Also you’ll want a small amount of water in the bottom of the pot -about an inch or so.

Continue adding the crab one by one into the pot, covering the pot. You may need something heavy to place on top of the lid of the pot, as crabs have a tendency to crawl out of the pot! The last thing you want is a kitchen full of upset crabs scurrying around with their claws ready to pinch.

If you find a crab or two that doesn’t appear to be moving, place the crab under running water and look for any movement at all. Even the slightest bit of movement means that you can still cook the crab. If the crab doesn’t move at all and has already died you should not cook the crab, but you can still take the claws off if you want and put them into the pot. Not sure why, but my family always did that and they were fine.

Steam the crabs for about 20-30 minutes. You will know when they are done because they will turn bright orange in color. When they’re done, take the pot off of the heat and lay the crabs out on a large table to cool. They’re good either hot or cold. Be sure to refrigerate any crabs that you don’t eat that evening. Normally we will place them into a paper grocery bag and put them into the refrigerator.

Freshly cooked crab will keep good for about a week. You can also freeze crab meat if you want to keep it for a longer amount of time. You will know if crab is bad because you can’t mistake the smell of bad crab. If it smells spoiled or if you’re not sure it’s always best to err on the side of caution and throw it out.

Tags: blue crab, how to cook crab, maryland blue crab

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 9:58 pm and is filed under how to cook crab. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.