Steam or boil crabs
 

Dungeness crabs. Steam, or boil? why and how?

Microwave! Not the best method but the kiddos love it when they explode!

I'm no expert but I do watch a lot of food network and I vote for steam... I would think boiling may make the carb watery.

YMMV

Married to a woman from Johns Island, South Carolina, I get my share of crab feasts. We use blue crabs, not Dungeness, but ALWAYS prefer steaming.

The only reason to boil is if you want to add a lot of spice or seasoning. Adding spice to the water seams to embed the flavor of the spices better.

We have a crab steamer, but I suppose you could set some ceramic bowls in the bottom of a pot with a good lid and a inch or two of water. The bowls will keep the crabs dry.

i steam.

my stepdad told me it preserves the flavor by not washing any of it into the water. i have a basket that elevates them about 3 inches up.

dont know about the flavor, but the steam is hot as heck, and the cold crab does very little to bring down the temps..right or wrong, i kinda like how fast they go.

downside. you pull out the crab and they can look kinda messy with all that crab-leakage. in a water bath it gets washed about. cleaner.

I steam, like Craig, blue crab. I catch my on. You can also control how well the crab is "cooked" better with steam.

Some folks do both - semi boil with spices to flavor the crab, steam to finish preparing and serve.

It all depends. For dungeness, I would steam because I prefer the way the heat gets into the meat.

I boil. I have never tried to steam. I have baked before too, which is more hearty and a nice change.

I catch them when I can - usually end up with rock crabs here but I also have gotten a sheep crab once. That was great. So big I had to hack it up to fit a large pot.

G

Use the shampoo and small comb. Doesn't hurt as much.

We always steam dungeoness. Amazing crab! Tasty stuff. Thuy cracks the body open and gets all that yummy meat in there too. And yes we have a pot with a perforated insert that holds it about 3" off the bottom. Just fill to the bottom of that and steam away!

I was raised on the east coast and caught blue crabs also and we always boiled the crabs in a huge pot with crab boil and most times they were alive when they went in and when the scratching stopped, there was a time to wait and then pull them out. I forget the time but it is probably on the internet somewhere.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1450993030.jpg

California's Dungeness crab declared not safe for Christmas - SFGate

so local lobster and Alaskan king crab legs tonight

I ended up boiling them. Turns out my large stock pots are out on loan (which was news to me) and my largest available pot will only comfortably hold two crabs. I had ten to do. So the faster boiling (10 min per pair, then into a warm oven for some residual heat cooking) was more appealing than slower steaming.

Makes sense, good advice.

I think my wife had them in High School....I will ask her

It is almost like 212 deg F.! ;)SmileWavy

Crab is good.
Nothing like a good messy feast of tasty sea creatures!

Okay professor :)


Sent via Jedi mind trick.

Now that you're done and I'm late for the train...
are/were they pre-cooked?...makes the difference, I'd guess.
I steam either way.
Yum.

Steam in vermouth.

We used to go crabbing, dragnet for shiners and try to catch eels when we lived on the shore, but I don't think there is anything like this in Long Island Sound. Whoa!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1451055536.jpg

Used to boil them whole.
Now days I kill them (basically bash their face off on a pointy rock) pull the shell off, break them in half, pull the gills and rinse out the guts before steaming. Much easier than trying to clean a hot crab.
I dont know anybody who eats the tomalley, though.