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How to cook a crab
Serves Starters and mains
Ingredients
- Crab
Method
Bring a large pan of water to the
boil and add a good handful of
salt. To dispatch the crab, locate
the flap on its underside, hinged
from the rear of the shell: a
pointed flap indicates a male;
a more rounded flap, a female.
Lift up the flap and locate the hole
where its loose point rests. Insert
the tip of a sharp instrument such
as a sturdy pointed knife or a slim
screwdriver into the hole and,
using a hammer or mallet, bash it
into the crab with one blow. It will
instantly die. Alternatively, put the
crab in the freezer for a maximum
of 8 minutes, but you must
put it into boiling water to cook
immediately after you take it out.
If cooking more than one crab, cook them one at a time. Bring the water back to the boil before immersing another. Once submerged, return the water to the boil. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Remove the crab, sit it upright on its nose and leave to cool.
Turn the crab on its back with the mouth facing away from you. Remove the flap at the rear of the shell and discard or set aside to use in stock. Twist and remove the legs, then claws. Set aside.
To remove the body, hold the crab firmly and prise it out with your thumbs or a blade. Set aside. Snap off the mouth part by prising it away from the shell using the thumbs and discard along with the gills on either side of the body (aka dead men’s fingers, which are tough and unpleasant to eat).
On each side of the large shell (the head) there will be brown meat. Generally there is more brown meat in the female than the male. Remove this and set aside.
The shell has some grooves on the open side that can be snapped off to widen the shell, forming a dish for the dressed crab.
Scrape out any brown meat and combine it with the brown meat you removed from the shell. Snap the body in two and divide each in half again. Pick out the white meat and set aside. The remains can now be used for stock.
Crack open the claws and legs, remove the white meat and combine it with the white meat from the body. The remaining shell can be added to the stock pot.
Best-dressed crab
One for the purists. Simply serve cooked crab with top-quality mayonnaise, lemon wedges and hard-boiled egg, the whites separated and the yolks finely grated into a pollen.
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