Crab ideas

[diggindan]

Sooo, the missus and I finally got lots of nice crab. 2 limits out of Alsea Bay. Really exciting till we got home and realized how much work we had to cook,clean and store that much crab.
We were up way past my bedtime!
We set some aside for a feast with friends tonite.Wrapped and froze about half and I'll shell the rest to maybe can the meat.

How about some posts with ideas, past experience, recipes, etc.

Cheers, Dan

 

[Thuggin4Life]

Heres a thought to cook them quicker next time. Pop there backs of pull the bulls*** out and break them in half. You can fit more in a pot that way.

 

[fishnquest]

Have lots of friends over, right away!

 

[osmosis]

crab looses its texture and gets unappealing very fast in a freezer. I've heard it helps if you submerge it in salt water or milk before freezing but I havent tried it.

I always make soups, chowders, ciopino's, and sauces and then can all of those immediately. What I don't use making those, we eat that night or give it to neighbors and friends.

 

[SNDSLGR]

Thug, you are right about what you say but imo you also loose a fair amount of the taste by doing it that way.

OS, I vacum pack the fresh meat being carefull to never let fresh water set on the meat before hand. I have never experienced the loss of texture or flavor... that being said, its never lasted more than 30-40 days in there either.. we eat it.


My neighbor freezes whole cooked crab halves then steems them back to life and serves like sno-crab. He says its good but I have not tried it yet, this last trip I froze a couple like that to try it and I will post here when we eat them.

I have a reciepe from a friend for crab cakes and my own for crab dip. Both are show stoppers but I am away from home right now. I will post later.

 

[Thuggin4Life]

I don't care for the crab butter so i think it tastes better to me anyways. And my favorite part of a crab is the legs. Back meat always tasted not as good but once i learned the half crab trick it seems to taste better. All personal prefference I guess. Just doesn't make sense to cook all the nasty parts.

 

[INSAYN]

Another vote for precleaning your crab prior to steaming. By precleaning at the boat launch, and putting the crab over ice (in bags), you are not in as big of a hurry to get the crab into a pot before it spoils.

As for flavor, I like to salt the hell out of the body parts, and steam over beer and seasonings.

All this talk about crab, might get me to actually take my boat out to one of the bays here in the next few months. It hasn't moved in over a year from my side yard. Crabbing has been hit or miss over the past few years, and it hasn't motivated me to spend the money on gas and bait.

 

[fishtales]

The water gets so brown when I boil crab that it needs to be changed at least once. I’m going to make and effort the other way to see if I detect a similar experience with the taste/texture.

We are going to be crabbing the mouth of the Columbia. I have never stored crab but would like too figure it out one day. I know a guy who freezes crab in water and I think it is suppose to help it last. Or maybe that is just his fish. I can’t remember.

 

[diggindan]

I haven't tried cleaning before cooking. Kinda freaks me out to pop the shell off when they're still kicking. Kinda like catfish.
Probably easier in the long run tho. Bring it home on ice and just toss the halves in the pot.
Problem is our dogs and cats love the guts as a topping on their food. Kinda sick huh? We have ziplocks of "crab goo" in the freezer.
We saran wrapped,paper wrapped and ziplocked halves for the freezer.
I shelled 6 yesterday and put 3 12 oz. ziplocks of meat in the freezer. It will probably alll get used by the end of the year.
Thanks for the posts. How about some recipes?
Cheers, Dan

 

[Hawk]

:lol::lol:som uv u folks r ver pervrted....:lol::lol::lol:


u no hoo u r...


:lol::lol::lol:...

i c u........:lol::lol::lol:

 

[The Nothing]

I've still not noticed much difference between cleaned-then-cooked vs cooked-the-clean.

I wil, however, try my best to keep fresh water away from sea fish and shellfish until they're going into the pot for dinner.

As for recipies...
man, what do you want? Crab cakes? Stuffed bell peppers? Stuffed jalapenos? Cioppino? I dunno where to start...

 

[xltom]

Back East I had a buddy who cleaned the live crabs before cooking. No mercy at all! The best thing about that method(besides fitting more in a pot) is that the seasoning gets all the way through the crab. We use a ton of "Old Bay" seasoning and cayan peper on dem chesapeak blue crabs...Just thinking about em has got me jonesin'.....Much better than Dungenous in my opinion.....Anyway, I never had the nerve to dismember the crab live, but I always pull out my dungenous halfway through cooking and clean them and put them back in the pot. The seasoned water really gets in there!!!! And it's easier to tell the exact moment they are done so you don't overcook.....I think they would probably cook faster cleaned too...!!!!

 

[diggindan]

I still don't much like cleaning anything that is still breathing. I think they have better flavor cooked whole anyway. Dungies have great flavor just cooked in salt water. I use kosher or canning salt. Too much seasoning kills the sweetness. Also keep them alive till cooking. Mine go in a cooler of sea water as soon as caught. I cook them 15-20 minutes, clean and wrap the halves in freezer paper. Then ziplocks and into the freezer.
To re-heat I put them in a foil tray/roasting pan and seal with foil. 250 degree oven 30-45 minutes and enjoy. Even when eating fresh I put them in the oven after cleaning. Much better warmed up.
I came up with a killer crab cake recipe that I will share in the appropriate section.
Cheers, Dan

 

[fishtales]

I love Crab Feeds. Sounds like you had a great time and did it with good company.

Be sure to never crab from a Jetty with a pot or a trap. After you toss it out you will never be able to retrieve it due to rock snags.

Last forth of July some friends and I were fishing Newport’s South Jetty. We had started in Garibaldi Oregon fishing the Jetty. We ended up staying the night in that hotel in the port right there before taking off the next morning for Newport. It was a pretty quiet morning. It had rained earlier so there where not many people out fishing. We actually stopped at Fred Meyers in Newport to pick up some rain gear. My friend’s dad does allot of the glass work on the fishing boats so we snooped around the marina for a bit. By the time we started fishing the rain had passed. Just My luck! Well couple hours in to fishing a group of about 7 or 8 Asians show up. Well they decided to fish from the rock right next to us. Minus the language barrier it did not really bother me. Well they started to drink and smoke weed openly. I didn’t care much. Eventually they left but before they did one of the guys threw a crab ring in. After about 15 min. he went to retrieve it and it was stuck.

That same day a scuba diver went out for lingcod. He was gone for about 45 min. When he came back he had two to the biggest fish Lingcod I had ever seen. Very Cool.