How To Open Every Shellfish | Method Mastery | Epicurious

[Music] I'm Mike Cruz manager Greenpoint fish wholesale and I'm here to show you how to prep every shellfish when I prepare shellfish I like to have three knives with me a large heavy back chef's knife a smaller curved too stiff knife for trimming as well as a thin flexible knife that's great for getting around shells and other intricate places it actually has a really nice feature where it extends lobster and crab Pickers an oyster knife which can get into the hinge really well a clam knife a shrimp Devane er a shellfish scissor which is great for cutting through lobster tails without damaging any of the flesh I have an offset spatula and for special circumstances we're gonna use a black light blue crab so this is a blue crab definitely native to East Coast waters first things first we're gonna steam this crab roughly six minutes it'll turn bright red and they'll be ready to pick out all the meat we pick the crab up starting with its front claws we'll just pinch straight from where it connects to the body down and out same with the other side down and out and we'll do the same for all the legs and the back swimmers here so now we're left with just the body will flip the crab upside down and lift up the apron here this will just snap right off exposing a opening there where we'll get our thumbs in and just peel off that top show now here we have some gills some other organs and we're just going to remove those this is the face plate which we'll also just peel right off clean out any excess organs from the center cavity and we're just gonna crack this right half going to peel back these little layers of cartilage that hold the meat in and using now or a little picking tool to just very gently start pulling it out really delicate sweet crab meat the meat will be covered with a super thin membrane it's just really easily peels right off and you essentially just want to get your skewer into any little crevice that you find and pulling straight out and getting out every little last bit of meat that's your body now with the claws separate out the pinchers legs tiny little knuckles we're just gonna come in on the most rounded part and just start snipping away crack that she'll open and fry that claw meat right out of there also the leg there really isn't much meat in these little back legs here the best thing I would do with these is just suck them dry it's really delicious that's pretty much how you break down a blue crab soft-shell crab this is a blue crab that has molten so basically they're changing shells and during this phase their shells are soft you can actually eat the whole crab this way shell and all currently they are out of season so right now we have a frozen soft-shell crab the head of the crab is here and that has a bunch of organs in it that we won't be eating today your first step is going to be just to snip right behind the eyes there discard that section after that we'll flip the crab over will remove this apron section here and lift up actually the top shell and expose the gills here and we'll just trim those off same thing to the other side so this is a completely dressed ready-to-eat soft-shell crab this thing deep-fried in a sandwich perfect Dungeness crab these are a West Coast species of crab really really sweet really delicious really tender meat when purchasing all live shellfish you want to make sure that they're alive look at their eyes make sure that they're convex and round not concave and sunken and people tend to steam them mostly and you want to aim for 10 minutes per pound and you can head on about 5 minutes per pound after that so this is a cooked Dungeness crab we're gonna pick the crab up and we'll start by just breaking claws off from the joint down here we're just gonna pull down and twist out we'll do that for all of these you want to really make sure you're at the joint when you do this now the legs are remove we're gonna start and just focus on the head flip it over and we're going to remove what is called the apron of the crab this just pulls right out really easily and now that leaves you with a cavity put your thumbs in like that and just pull back the head this is what's called the mustard of the crab and this is really delicious so do not throw it out and just hold it off to the side for now so now we're just gonna focus in on the meat that is in the actual body itself so we'll be taking off these gills here you do not want to eat any extra pieces that are kind of getting in your way with your hands for now this is the mouth organs will just snap those off easily now crack this crab in half which you can do with your hands they'll just turn it away from you and just pull apart one more time essentially you're cracking this into quarters once you have it broken down into quarters we'll start to see there are little cavities that all contain the meet with your skewer go in there and just scoop around the cavities they have sections of what almost looks like really thin plastic that separates all that meat this easily can get into the meat itself so you want to be careful when you're doing this to kind of make sure that you're only getting the meat out of the crab we're gonna move on to the legs just gonna take them out this first little digit here we can just remove and toss and then we'll just break it down on the joints I'll snap one way until it's free and then coming out the other way and ideally this will take out any pieces of cartilage with it if you have a pair of shellfish scissors here they're curved to avoid any meat you can just come straight in and just cut that and you can crack the shell right open pull out some really beautiful full pieces of crab leg and we use our skewer just to scoop it out so that's a leg and I will do a claw again putting pressure on the opposite way of the joint remove this section first then the knuckle and then the actual claw on the hinge just pop it once until it breaks on that side bring it back the other way and you should be pulling out that entire cartilage piece there that's right in the middle of all the meat in your claw take the scissors and we're just going to cut go through the knuckle do the clock going on this really beautiful full piece of leg and that's how you pick crab legs a great way to find any extra pieces of shell that may be stuck in your crab meat is a black light [Music] Maine lobster you always want to have a live product with lobster specifically and most shellfish generally you never want to be eating a lobster that's been dead for more than 24 hours the meat within their bodies decays very quickly so essentially having a live lobster in front of you tells you I know this is safe I know this is fresh I know this is gonna be delicious before you cook it you're going to want to kill it in the most humane way possible put your knife in at the base of the head where the body meets press straight down and just crack down there may be some residual movement but that's just the nervous system firing you can continue your cut if you want it straight down the middle if you were looking to grill the tails but either way your lobster is now ready to be prepped take off these bands which are just there to protect you from getting pinched pick the lobster up by the body hold it pretty firmly you're gonna want to get the tail pretty much where the joint meets the body twist one way twist another way just to loosen it up and then go a full rotation with it while pulling out so there you'll have your lobster tail you come around to the front side of the lobster and grabbing the claw from where it connects to the body pinch right there and just twist and pull out same thing to the other side and then these small legs separate out one by one so here you have your tail your pincher your crusher and your legs we'll take the claws and again where that joint meets here you're just gonna want to use your thumbs to just kind of crack and open like there and then you have a knuckle which you'll just twist right off same thing to the pincher claw so there you have a lobster fully broken down and ready to cook cooked Maine lobster so here I have a cooked lobster I'm going to show you how to take all the meat out so starting with the arms we'll just pinch from the joints down and twist twist out and go into the back tail give it a twist one way and finish it out the other way and then for the legs snap to get the tail meat out in the easiest way these back fins here they kind of peel right off by just snapping them back and you'll see already the tail meat is starting to expose itself holding the lobster tail between your fingers in both hands give it a squeeze one time and then you'll turn it away from you and pull outwards this should free up entire tail leaving nothing inside moving on to the crusher claw pull this claw down on its joint away as soon as you hear that crack pull up on the other side to free up the bottom half and just give it like a little twist as it comes out and you should leave the claw meat still attached to the cloth from here we can separate out the knuckle and then again from the leg joint with the crusher claw use a heavy back knife and just give it a smack right on the fattest part there same thing on the other side once you have those two sides cracked it pretty much just take your hand and crush it careful not to destroy the meat on the inside wiggle that claw right out the same thing to the pincher pull it straight out for the knuckle meat you can use a specialized tool like this specifically made for scooping out lobster meat go in through one of the openings run the tip of it along the edge of the shell trying to stay as tight as possible and not break into any of the meat you come in through the other side and you can just push and shimmy that knuckle meat right for the remaining parts of the leg stick a skewer the end of a spoon something thin and non flexible in to this first joint here and you can kind of pop right out and that meat comes right out just like that and often underutilized part of the lobster is actually their legs people think that there's little to no meat in them and they don't see it as a worthwhile project to take on it's actually really easy and pretty fun you have a rolling pin you lay these out flat on a cutting board and kind of like the toothpaste you can just squeeze that meat out the meat just squeeze this right out so this is a lobster fully picked your crusher your pincher your knuckles your like meats and then your remainder like meat and your tail profit this is a live crawfish they're actually capable of traversing small distances of land whenever I get these in at my job you'll find them in the office you'll find them in the locker room you'll find them in the bathroom when you least expect that you look down and there's just a crawfish waiting for you so and they're really fun and easy to make and eat so if you're doing a crawfish whoa I would definitely suggest maybe 10 to 15 minutes for a big pot of them just let them cook with everything and pull them out with some bright red so here we have our cooked crawfish they're like mini lobsters so what you want to do is separate that tail from the body hold on to the tail and just give it a twist this is what you eat on a crawfish but it's not the only thing you necessarily enjoy you want to make sure to suck out all of these delicious head juices it's just delicious so for the tail these little back fins back here peel those off quickly ideally that will also remove any sort of intestinal track you can just peel them right out of their shell super fast and easy simple as that delicious langostino langostino is actually a catch-all term for what is a type of squat lobster we are going to remove these back set of fins off the tail pull right back and just twist them off the meat from the tail is exposed grabbing it in each of its sections between two fingers I'm just going to squeeze until I hear a crack I'm going to do that for each little segment here this one actually has some really gorgeous blue eggs underneath it continue to peel the shell basically this thing will just peel right off in individual segments all the way down and we'll do the same thing to the other side once that's done you can flip it over and just start peeling it back and just revealing that really gorgeous flush snap that bottom membrane just very gently peel it and you will be left with an absolutely gorgeous langostino I would just barely poach this thing or really ideally just serve it raw like this American white shrimp we have the head on with this guy so what we'll do just grab the head with one hand grab the tail with the other hand and you're just going to twist it off I have a shrimp to Vayner flatten the shrimp out in your hand and extend it you're gonna go all along the top shell the shrimp and then come out right before the tail and now with our hands we can just go in and just remove it segment by segment you can choose to leave the tail fins on or you just feel them right off now what you're gonna do is run your knife just along the top of the shrimp gently exposing where the intestinal tract will be making sure there's nothing there and there you will have a peeled and deveined shrimp prawn prawns and shrimp very similar prawns have an extra set of pinchers right up in the front we're going to peel devein and today we're gonna take it one step further and I'm gonna show you how to butterfly the prawn as well first things first we are going to remove the head by holding onto the head and the tail separately and just twisting off for the prawn tail we're gonna use our D Boehner we're going to go in straight at the top of the shell and just follow all the way down then with our hands we're just going to come back and peel everything off and we'll use our tool to open up the tail and just remove that as well now you'll see intestinal tract some other organs in here and we're just gonna use our hands to just make sure we get all of those out and now that we have it cleaned up take the sharp part of our shrimp knife here and right where that intestinal tract was we're going to follow that line being careful not to cut all the way through the underside of the prong now once you have it opened up you can cut a little bit on one side a little bit on the other side just very shallow cuts here until the prong lays flat and that's how you butterfly a prawn butterflying is particularly great for even quick cooking but these certainly lend themselves well to being grilled shell on you can broil them bake them boil them steam them it's just a great product to work with sea scallop live sea scallops for bivalves which essentially means they have two shells a top shell and a bottom shell which are joined right at the end with a hinge locate the top shell which is always going to be more rounded the bottom shell will always be a little more flat enter the scallop in from the back show not the top I like to stay on my scallop up on the hinge locate where the gap is use my knife to really wedge it open and my fingers to hold it there I'll stick my flexi knife underneath the eyes peel them back slightly locate the mussel and really staying tight to the back shell and going slow I'll just wiggle my knife straight down until it fries open that muscle this lip on the outside is actually where they have a large number of eyes you don't want to be eating any of that you're gonna peel back the eyes hold onto that membrane and just pull everything out so now you're left with the main muscle attached to the bottom shell the muscles always is on one side of the scallop slightly more than the other so you want to get on that closer side using something flexible in a swooping motion press down pretty hard with your knife and the scallop will slide right out and then you have a live sea scallop Duxbury oyster there are lots of different types of voices out there generally speaking there's one way to shock them you have a flat side and then you have a cup that holds the meat so you're gonna want to turn the cup down on your cutting board and get a good grip on it flat and you'll see there's a hinge here with a bit of a gap take your shucking knife and just get it into that gap to get a little bit deeper you're gonna want to put some pressure going this way towards the front of the oyster while also wiggling but you don't want to be pressing so hard that if you slip you have a bad accident there's no rush with this you'll feel it and once the knife is stuck in the oyster give it another little wiggle just to crack the oyster open slightly take the knife out and come along this side closest to you with just the tip of your knife you're going to be wiggling and staying very tight to that top shell until you cut the first muscle holding here you'll do the same thing on the other side you should have fairly clean moister there's one more muscle down here that's also holding the meat onto the bottom half of the shell so you'll come in careful not to spill too many juices and you'll just sort of free up that one side and there you go a shucked oyster ready to go East Coast oysters are definitely a favorite amongst a lot of people especially here on the East Coast they have a higher salinity to them they're more briny so that's gonna equal more salt in the flavor of your oyster bay water sweets these come from the west coast out of Washington State same as always the shells on these can be a little brittle so you will want to take extra caution and their hinges sometimes are covered by extra pieces of shell that kind of come up with a wiggle wiggle until you start to feel yourself about to get in and you just pop you're all freed up there you have a shot West Coast oyster I could definitely crush a dozen of the easily European flat also sometimes known as Boleyn Easter's first up for these is to remove the band so you find the hinge right where the two shells connect but just don't stop wiggling don't stop pressing and you'll feel it start to go slightly anymore until you get that pop get that hinge free I'm trying my best let's keep the oysters flat and my palm as possible just to not leak out all of those juices three up that bottom muscle and there you have a European flat shucked oyster I don't like these oysters now we can't taste it yeah alright it's like licking a battery Prince Edward Island mussels these mussels come from Prince Edward Island off the east coast of Canada one important thing if it's alive it should be tightly shut or if it's open a little bit pretty much as soon as you touch it or tap it or give it a squeeze or something like that it should shut up by itself within the muscle there's probably going to be a little bit of sand and grit so definitely take at least a minimum an hour to purge your muscles and give them time to release that sand your next step is essentially going to be removing the beard of the mussel which is what the mussel uses to attach on to rocks or if they're farmed onto the ropes that they're hanging from you'll find it on the flat end of the mussel kind of looks like hairs you're gonna want to grab on to those get a good grip on them as you wiggle wiggle wiggle once you have the beard exposed a little bit more you'll pinch it between your two fingers really focus on the wiggling wiggling wiggling and then it'll just pop right out and your mussels are ready to cook hardshell clams depending on where you're from you're gonna call them something different a little neck a count neck a cocktail clam some people will call this a top neck a cherry stone at the end of the day they're all hardshell clams you're absolutely going to need a clam knife one side the back of the night totally flat super thin blade and a slightly sharpened edge it helps to slip into the clam easily I like to check out the lip of the clam find the slight gap within it set my knife in that hinge squeeze and sort of wiggle a little bit until you find that opening it's gonna want to be pretty tightly closed so you're just gonna pop it open slightly once you have that gap ready you'll come in along the sides just scraping the very top of the clam cut one of the muscles that's holding it on that side you'll do the same exact thing on the other side stay really tight to that top shell until you feel that pop once you do you're gonna scrape that top shell until it just pops right open separate from one bottom hinge here one bottom hinge on this side free up that meat and you have a shocked clam I think they can stand up to a stirs softshell clam also known as a steamer clam we're just gonna want to do a very quick blanch basically just a flash in the water right out and into an ice bath you essentially just want the clam to separate from the shell and make it really easy to work with so after blanching you'll see that the clam has opened up these clams burrow deep into the ground this portion here the siphon or the neck is what actually comes out of the sand to retrieve water and food so we'll start with that facing upwards facing the clam towards you with your clam knife you're just gonna rub along the sides and just make sure that the clam is completely separated from the shell itself and they just fall right out after a quick blanch you can see an extra membrane here peel that right off of the siphon portion you'll see a set of gills right here a couple of other organs so we can just peel all of that away with our clam knife and for the neck we can just scrape away any dark bits on both sides you'll want to ensure that there is no sand or grit stuck in the siphon cut it right in half slightly just take a peek inside give it a quick scrape once you have all of these cleaned the clam is out and trimmed this is ready for your chowder it's ready for frying it's ready to eat razor clam the meat is very delicate on these razors so when I prepare razor clams I like to use a blunt object nothing really too sharp so I will take a offset spatula there's again a top shell in a bottom shell find the gap you'll see some meat being attached to the membrane on the top shell same on the side shell enter in really tight onto that top shell and just start peeling away the membrane making sure you take your time to get everything off once that size free flip it we can do the same exact thing to the other side once it's open the top shell should just peel right off scrape out anything that's stuck you have the foot you have the siphon and when you flip it you'll see the belly and the intestinal tract of the clam I'm gonna grab a small knife and we're just going to trim away belly the foot just tougher more nasty parts so you don't necessarily want to eat occasionally there are grits of sand within the siphon itself straighten it out as best you can and using a sharp knife not cutting all the way through just being very gentle to open up that siphon you can see it's pretty clean I'll give it a little rinse what I like to do just really thin slices of razor I think they have like a really beautiful sweet flavor to them gently pan-seared is great but raw is the way to go gooey duck GUI duck are definitely some of the more unique-looking shell for something we're gonna be working with today this is a West Coast shellfish they're the largest burrowing clam very sought-after well known in the sushi community first steps when looking to prepare a gooey duck you're gonna need to purge it basically you're going to submerge it in salt water for at least an hour your next step is going to be a quick blanch in some boiling water 15 seconds right into an ice bath this will allow the gooey duck to separate from the shell also will allow us to remove any extra membranes that might be tough and make the preparation of the gooey duck more difficult so let's blanch it now our gooey duck is now blanched and we're gonna point the opening of the shell out to you come in here and put your knife right up against that shell and really just follow that line you want to be very careful to not puncture the actual meat of the gooey duck once that side is free you can do the same exact thing up on the other side until everything is freed this little part here this is your gooey duck out of the shell there are a few parts here that we're not going to want to eat this siphon has a membrane over it so it gets connected down from all the way at the bottom you'll just release some of the extra and just start to peel it off in this rounded area you're gonna have the stomach in the belly so we're gonna remove that and you can see it kind of hangs off we're just gonna come in and go straight down like that and we'll do the same thing to the other side this will go this will get split pretty much into these sections here we're gonna want to open this siphon up just to ensure that there's no sand or grit or anything like that in there making sure to make shallow cuts just enough to get it open I don't want to cut it directly in half it's in there we can see a little bit of sand and just pour it off and we have some extra organs in here that we're gonna want to clean up so just gently with the tip of your knife we're gonna run it just along the edges it is hollow right behind it so your knife will slip through if you're not careful the same thing to the other side and we'll just peel this right out and we'll trim the edges there you'll notice some discoloration on the siphon itself here when you're working with the product from live to finish so if we get some salt here and some water I'm gonna actually use that salt to scrub the outside rinse off any excess salt and you can see already the color is starting to brighten up on them just slice it super thin enjoy it raw it's just a clam don't let its appearance deter you from picking one up if you see them cockle cockles have been described as more complex than hardshell clams they just have an extra level of savory and extra level of umami an extra level of ocean goodness similar to an oyster we will go in where the hinge meets and we're just gonna wiggle just wiggle until you feel that pop it just happened you're gonna run the knife really tightly along the top shell there do it to both sides you're gonna free up any little bit of meat on the bottom there you'll do the same thing cutting the muscle that connects the cockle there you have a shucked cockle abalone abalone is a type of sea snail super well known and sought-after for their really white firm meat which can be quite expensive and also for their really gorgeous mother of pearl shells really beautiful creature so to prepare an abalone what I like to do is I'll take a offset special a blunted object and you just go in around the sides of the shell and start freeing up the meat getting under that membrane as best as you can until it is freed up from the shell so when you pop the abalone out of the shell you'll see just a stunning array of colors on the inside of their shell and you'll see a hot mess of a shellfish in front of you and we show you how to clean that up now the white meat here is what you're going to want to get at there are some organs around it those all just come right off and just by hand start peeling off extra stuff here I mean this meat is just really really firm really beautiful look a quick little rinse just to get off some of this extra stuff so using a small paring knife I'm essentially just gonna start trimming any little extra black parts should come off if you just scrape it that's a shucked cleaned and trimmed abalone conch this is a type of sea snail they live twenty to thirty years actually so they get fairly big as they get older they actually grow with their shell so first you want to identify your crown of spikes they'll have one larger one here something a little smaller and then a tiny one around the spiral what you're gonna need to do is make a hole in the shell between the second and third well you want to just sort of tap slightly this breakaway a little bit from here I'm gonna use my offset spatula something about an edge and I'm just gonna go along the top of the shell and just sort of run the spatula along that shell just to free up the snail from inside so just take your time don't force it just going on all different angles there we go you'll get a grip of that foot and just start to pull it out down here this is a hard shell you're just going to trim that away you just want to trim away any sort of dark stuff on there you are left it's a really nice firm piece of shellfish that lends itself really well to being sliced very very thin I mean this is great for sashimi but I mean I suggest almost all shellfish be tried raw at least once and that's how you prep conch in West Coast sea urchin so the covenants Pines this is essentially their defense mechanism is how they move around it's how they capture food that they're gonna get they have a set of extremely delicious ro sacs within them that most people will know as Unni you want to be very careful not to get pricked by the spines to handle them gently flip them over that is the urchins mouth I like to use a little paring knife for this and we're just gonna go right around where the mouth is and just free that up for us so we can get our scissor in it will be fair a fair amount of liquid and again I'm not going super deep you just want to be enough so that it's free we'll take a bowl and we're just going to dump out any liquid we're gonna dump all that out if you look closely there are some divisions within the way that the urchin is set up you want to take a pair of shears and get in kind of in between one of those sections and just make a cut we can do another one on the other side and we're just looking to pretty much meet these two cuts and just start trimming they kind of just peel right off you can see already the really beautiful bright orange row that's starting to expose itself just all of this is in the way so we're just gonna get rid of that pretty much you can just shake it out you can use your finger I like to use a little offset spatula and just free anything up that's getting stuck being super mindful of those really delicate rose acts that you don't want to disturb you can really start seeing them now take a slotted spoon where the RO sack was attached to that top layer you'll come in the tip of your spoon and pretty much just start scooping them out and they pretty much just hug the side of the urchin so you just want to follow the same shape that the urchin has naturally gonna take the RO sacks and spatula and my spoon you just gently drop them into the water get in there with your hand shake them a little bit very gently just to knock off any of that extra organs that are on there you are ready to enjoy one of the most delicious things in the sea sea urchin roe you can just put it on your hand like so and just super closest East Coast sea urchin looks really different than the West Coast variety but the procedure is still exactly the same turn it around onto its back only using the very very tip of my knife and we're just gonna dump out all the excess liquid and seawater and we'll pull the beak out we're gonna go in straight across we'll do the same thing to the opposite side and then we're gonna start or airway around removing the bottom section I'm going to deep not rushing we're gonna dump out again any excess liquid that's in here oh guy already full up they want to come out of the urchin you remove any of those extra organs that are stuck on there submerge this into water will start retrieving these ro sex they're really gorgeous East Coast sea urchin roe nothing is better than urchin honestly this is great so hopefully today I've taken some of the fear out of bringing home live shellfish it takes a little bit of practice don't be afraid to make any mistakes aside from requiring new skills for your culinary tool belt just really take your time and appreciate what you have in front of you and appreciate everything the ocean has to offer

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 13,338,242

Rating: 4.8740668 out of 5

Keywords: method mastery, epicurious method mastery, crack shellfish, open shellfish, how to open shellfish, prepare shellfish, open lobster, open crab, crack crab, open crab shell, open lobster shell, crack lobster shell, how to open crab, how to open lobster, how to crack shellfish, how to crack crabs, shellfish expert, open every shellfish, crack every shellfish, method mastery epicurious, epicurious shellfish, shellfish epicurious, shellfish, every shellfish, epicurious

Id: hJTy_8Dtbsc

Length: 37min 0sec (2220 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020