Boiled VS Steamed Blue Crabs | Head To Head Comparison

five months ago I did a poll on my youtube channel in the community section and I was asking all of you my subscribers my viewers who would like to see a bald vs. steam blue-crab video it's like a big robbery type thing has been for many years between the East Coast up around Maryland and down here on the Gulf Coast we do them two different ways totally and they think they had the best way we think we had the best way and today I kind of want to settle that and and see just what's up with that and we're gonna get started with that right after this [Music] [Music] before we get started I want to give a big thanks to camera on seafood for sponsoring this video they are the largest Maryland blue crab distributor in the world they have over 10 locations throughout Maryland and Pennsylvania they had three food trucks that also run in that area well thank you very much for sending out some fantastic looking crabs all right also big shout out for daviesuk thank you so much for being a really good subscriber and loving my videos and you go ahead figure out who told me that so thank you buddy I appreciate it big shout out to you Dave busy these crabs were shipped yesterday according to what I got the email the shipping notification around 3:30 Maryland time they Rove the air about 10:30 this morning Saturday so I haven't done the math but that was way under 24 hours got the ice pack still nice and cold they got wet paper on top of these Wow look at those beautiful they're still alive they're just dormant from being cold and chilled all night if you were to set these down a little warm up a little bit they would begin to come back to life and go to snapping and all that good stuff but nice looking crabs let's look under the belly there yeah we got the rust that's usually a good indication oh I feel him moving he's very much loved all right so it's time to get going with this steamed versus boiled and so what we can come up with so we can figure out but I'm gonna tell you straight up you know it's only cooking methods we're talking about here we're talking about boiling crabs we're talking about steaming crabs there's other methods as well hey Forrest I know all there is to know about the crabbing business you can steam them you can barbecue them you can grill them you can bake them you can broil them you can fry them you even got stuffed crabs crab cakes you got softshell fry po-boys you Krabbe gumbo you got crab bisque you got she-crab soup you got marinated crab claws you got fried crab claws you got crab dip you got crab souffle you got crab melts you got devil Krabs you got crab stuffed flounder you got crab balls you got crab salad you got crab grits you got crab pasta that's that's about it the whole point of that was was to make a point that steaming boiling it's just two different methods of cooking crabs there are many methods you know and there's many different recipes that you can do with crabs so I hope I kind of drove that home to the people out there and you might hear the burner fired up we are dodging the thunderstorms again today I went ahead and fired up the ball in pot we're gonna start with a bowling pot I'm gonna show you here just in a few minutes it's still sprinkling it's fixing to move out I'm going to show you the seasonings that we're adding whoo you can see the steam we're up to a full rolling boil yes sir [Music] all right we go get this party started with four and a half pounds of swamp fire seafood boil I'm gonna show you how to kill that foam watch this we're gonna go in with a couple of cups of liquid crab boil it's going to calm it right down now normally I don't use that much I only use from about here to here by about two and a half three cups but with crabs their shells are so thick and hard to penetrate you really need to bump it up I've got two Zetas rounds extra spicy flow through crap ball packets going in got about eight lemons we're going to squeeze them in drop them into the ball mix last one now as you're going to find out later when you're steaming crabs they use vinegar I use vinegar too but it's called a wheezy and a hot sauce in a boil don't put this entire bottle in all right now for people that's watch previous videos the bags I'm using are all cotton there's no dyes know anything at it these are bowling bag disease or what they're designed for this is for onions quartered going in this one is I think six five or six heads of garlic and I cut the tops off for those and also I took some celery and I just diced it up really rough going in so I'm gonna put my lid back on I'm gonna cut this ball down something where it's still balling but not as violent been going fifteen minutes and as you can see that's a nice rolling boil and I have this flame down as low as it can go and the flames still stay blue without turning red this one problem I lit up right here I'm gonna kill this fire all right fires off we're going to load this thing up with two dozen crabs four five six seven is that nine 10 11 14 15 16 I'm gonna put my lid back on we our fire back up we're going full blast they achieve a rolling ball really fast I tell you what I just put all those cold crabs in there and we're already up to a rolling boil I'm on Thomas we're at 5:26 we're going to 529 I'm gonna kill this fire alright we've been going three minutes they already read I meant this read as they can be keep your lid on turn the fire off now we're going to let these go five minutes just like this that water is not going to cool off much in five minutes we're going to have some done crabs and at that point we're gonna cool them off we've been sitting actually more like seven minutes and I hope you understand what I'm doing here most people tell you to ball these crabs for ten minutes at a hard boil some say fifteen and you're actually overcooking your crabs by doing that what I've done was put all the seasonings in here got them to a rolling ball head just as hot as it could possibly go which is 212 degrees because I live at sea level and then we turned the fire off drop the cold crabs in and then fired it right back up within 30 seconds this thing was already starting to boil not a hard ball but it's starting to boil within another minute hard ball ball for three minutes put the lid or keep the lid on shut the fire off and you're gonna write maintain extremely high cooking temperatures compared to where the crab temperature needs to be internally without the risk of overcooking your crab and turning it mushy so that's what we've done now I'm taking a lid off so now I'm going on with the ball ball got it in place we're gonna turn this valve on and we're gonna cool this pot off as you can see it's got running water all the way around it cooling the size of this pot alright so we're dealing with blue crabs with claws and they're easy to knock off looks like most of them still have their claws intact that we put in here so we didn't have any crabs shooting their claws off like you can do it especially if you don't ice them down you can take a live crab drop him in hot boiling water he's on a shoot some calls off but anyway you want to do it very gently and let this bowl balls do this job that's gonna cool this down rapidly we just won't sit here and do this keep this water moving for about the next three minutes now if you'll take a look down this part you won't see any crabs that's because all of them has st. just like crawfish they will fill up with this water this season water with all this goodness and they're gonna sink which means they're really taking it in and all we're gonna do now is turn this valve off on the ball boss it has done its job the water is cooled off enough to make them sink and we're just gonna let them hang out for around 30 minutes and meantime we're gonna get the steamer fired up we're gonna do some steamed crabs we're gonna be steaming these first in the apple cider vinegar all right we're going about half of this this is 3.78 liters now into that we're adding beer it nobody said what kind I'm using Bud Light that's what I'm drinking so hey let's go for it I'm gonna try to go in with 50% of one and 50% to the other so I'm gonna get the rest this beer in here I'm going in with a six-pack I think it's going to take alright let me show you my steaming basket some of y'all might remember this from previous videos a couple years ago this has a hatch that you can actually put at any level inside this basket as you can see here I'm a couple maybe two hundred two and a half three inches above and that's fine you just don't want your crowds that to get into the liquid you want nothing but pure steam so we're gonna go ahead and stack these crabs and make us a layer so I think everybody knows what they use up there in Maryland old bay and it's not the only one there's other seasonings that's become very popular up there just like ours that Iran is down here at one time was like the only Cajun seasoning that there was and now you got a lots of them so you know that's that doesn't surprise me but we're going with the traditional which is obey and all you want to do is just sprinkle these on your crabs and get a good heavy coating just take it on there all right now we're going to build another layer on top of this layer there we go I'm gonna get this up to a steam then we're gonna lay the crabs in there once it's up to a real harsh steam before I smell vinegar in the air we are up to steam I just laid the basket in there with the seasoned crabs we're going on with the lid we're gonna let them rock for 20 minutes exactly we have been going 20 minutes exactly gonna take the lid off well they're nice and pink they look done let me cut this burner off all right I'm gonna take this basket out of here and we're just gonna set it all to the side let you cool down a little bit then we're gonna put them in a nice chest just like the other ones but in a separate ice chest to where we know which it's not hard to know which is which the steamed crabs obviously have all the seasonings on top of them and the other crabs do not we are done we have got bald crabs we have got steamed crabs and here they are and if you're wondering why this one is upside down I'm going to show you now because this is the first one I'm gonna start with we're going to remove this apron we're going to remove the shell from the body now I don't know if you see that but that's pure liquid gold this is the juice that you're trying to keep in this shell that's the reason they go bottom side up now all I'm gonna do from here just take and remove these dead man fingers all right now we're going to bend in bend out we're gonna break it in half we're gonna remove this little piece of shell right here and I'm going after the prize a lump crabmeat right here at the tail end of the crab and there we go look at that lots of meat and the reason for that bin from what I've from what I understand is the waters get a lot colder there in Maryland and the crabs naturally just have a lot of fat stores which lets the meat really pile on everything for the winter months so they survive all right here we go that's my first Maryland crab my real Maryland crab that I know for a fact that come out of Chesapeake Bay I've had crabs on the East Coast but I was researching another day and to find out there's been a shortage of crabs there's been a shortage of crabs in that area for like the last ten years so they're actually shipping to a lot of places I Louisiana but these are guaranteed 1% Chesapeake Maryland crabs and I absolutely taste the difference this is fantastic hmm that's seasoned and gets in there so well now I've heard people say that it's just a wet mess when you boil them and all that I don't know let's zoom up on this let's see if we can show this meat right here I mean that is not a wet mess that that is just perfection is what that is moist yes very moist delicious you bet we're gonna go ahead and get into this Maryland style steamed crab move the apron move the shell fold it crack it open same thing move that a little bit of shell there let's go for this lump crabmeat look at all that meat oh my god that's so good there's a little bit of juice in there just from the steaming I'll tell you the truth the flavor is a little different of course because of the seasonings we use but they're both excellent I meant oh my god these are so good I tell you what I'm not gonna take sighs because and it's not because I don't mind getting beat up over it it's because I honestly can't taste that much difference between them one's not more wetter than the other they're both great cooking methods there's two fantastic ways of cooking crabs from two different regions and I would encourage if you're in Maryland to give it a try try the boiled and if you're down here on the coast try the steamed matter of fact there's more more places popping up that do steamed crabs there was a place about three doors down from where I was raised that balls crawfish and they're doing steamed crab now I meant it's not a bad method at all neither is boiling so I hope you enjoyed this video and I want to thank Cameron seafood once again for sending out some fantastic meaty Maryland blue crabs man these things are fantastic and anybody can get these shipped it to the lower 48 like I said earlier I'll have links in the description box for them so if you never tried this you really owe it to yourself to and you can order these already steamed ready to go you can either eat them cold when they get there or he gives you instructions on how to reheat them through steaming very simple very easy hope you endure the video until next time smoke your ribs

Channel: Smoky Ribs BBQ

Views: 627,665

Keywords: how to boil blue crabs, how to steam blue crabs, how to cook blue crabs, crab recipe, smoky ribs channel, maryland blue crabs, Chesapeake blue crabs, how long to steam crabs blue, how long to steam crabs in pot, how long to steam crabs in steamer, how long does it take to steam blue crabs, how long to boil blue crabs, boiled blue crabs recipe, how to eat boiled blue crab, boiled vs steamed blue crab, is steamed crab better than boiled, east coast blue crabs, boiled vs steamed

Id: Nt0C4ERGUPw

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 12 2018