How to Break Down Fresh Crab Like a Pro - Kitchen Conundrums with Thomas Joseph

today I am super excited to share with you the technique in breaking down a crab now crab is wonderful the meat is succulent and sweet but it can be a daunting task when you actually have to crack into one of these guys so I'm going to show you how to do it today and you know what this thing forget about it in front of me here I have a dungeon's crab and this is a West Coast crab so this is the crab cooked and this is what it looks like before you cook it they have a beautiful purpley brown color to their shell their legs are usually orange like more of a a terracotta color and then I have here a East Coast crab and this is probably one of the most popular East Coast crabs this is a blue crab and you can tell it's a blue crab by the wonderful blue color During certain times of year I believe it's April through September you'll start seeing uh blue crabs like this that are soft shelled so that means that the crab has molted its shell and those are really great uh pan fried so today I'm going to show you how to break down a crab I'm going to demonstrate on this big dungeoness crab here when you're cooking crab by the way the best way like lobster is to steam them instead of boiling them boiling them dilutes the flavor of the crab and let them cool a little bit you don't want to break into them while they're so crazy hot otherwise you're going to burn yourself so you're going to start off by first flipping the crab over I'm going to take the legs off in a twisting motion so you want to grab as close as you you can to the body of the crab and you want to give a slight twist and pull okay just like that now you don't always have to eat crab while it's hot actually dungeoness crab is best served cold with a delicious spicy mayo is really really great so go around leave these off to the side and I'll show you how to break these open in a bit so now what you're going to do is you're going to remove the apron which is here um all you have to do is pull this forward and back and discard this this stuff here don't worry about it this is called the mustard it's leaking out a little bit now remove the top shell here from the crab and you're going to do that by grasping the back corner these two back Corners right where those last legs were and you're going to pull apart you can see you're going to pull the shell away from where the lump crab meat is this area here this is the mustard it looks a little unsightly but it has a lot of really great flavor so now what we have here what's left these are the gills of the crab so this is kind of like the lungs of the crab and what these aren't really edible so don't try to eat them um and all you have to do is pull them away and now you're going to remove what's left of of the mouth which is right here so all you have to do is I usually use my thumb and crack it backwards I'm going to clean this up just a little bit and now one way to knock out some of the mustard that might be left in around the lump crab meat is just to kind of shake it or tap it on the side of the bowl so now to get all of that delicious lump crab meat which that's what everybody's after what you're going to do is you're going to take what's left this piece and you're going to split it in half and now what you can do is you're going to peel away the shell and you should be left with nice pieces of meat so now you can use one of these Nifty little um these are like seafood Forks or you could use a wooden skewer just the same and all you're going to do is pick out as gently as you can all of the lump crab meat from inside these little pockets here now sometimes you might have to crack this half into another half and by the way way the reason I'm not using a mallet to do this is because what will happen if you use a mallet what you're going to do is you're going to literally crush the shell and create lots of fragments of shell that get mixed in um with your meat and also it will crush all of the meat that you have so you won't get those nice jumbo pieces of meat out look at that I mean that is a good piece of crab meat right so I'm going to put it off to a bowl here and just continue on picking through the meat you could easily do this at home and save it to make a delicious crab cake dungeoness crab is actually used often times to make a crab louie which is a salad so you're basically going to go through this entire process of picking through the shell once you get to a point where there's no crab left give this a crack and it should open up another little cavernous location that should have even more lump meat crab in it so you're going to go about this process until you're all done and all the shell is separated I'm going to put this off to the side for now and show you how to crack the legs and the claws I'm going to start with the claw here you're going to break this into segments so wherever the claw naturally moves wherever the joints are that's where you're going to separate the claw so there's one piece this is the knuckle here now if the crab is big and it has sharp points to it you might want to use a rag here to help you just like that and now what I like to do is I like to use the back of a knife and I like to do it on both sides so I'm cracking both sides there and then if you can kind of shimmy the shell back and forth until it cracks open like that and you should be able to peel the shell away giving you a little bit of an opening here to take your fork and you should be able to fish out your crab meat in some nice big pieces like that it may take you a little bit of time to get the meat out of the crab but it's well worth it especially if you have fresh seasonal crabs now if you guys have any Seafood conundrums of course as always write in the comment section below or reach out to me using the # kitchen conundrums there you go guys [Music] [Music] enjoy

Channel: Everyday Food

Views: 817,419

Keywords: Recipe, Recipes, Cooking, Cook, Food, Dinner, Easy meal, Dinner tonight, Everyday Food, Home made, Sarah Carey, Martha Stewart, Family meal, easy cooking, how to, food ideas, quick dinners, fast recipes, easy recipes, quick recipes, Crabs, Seafood, How To, pro, pro tip

Id: 48WTCnF2rSQ

Length: 6min 30sec (390 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2016