Typically considered restaurant-only fare, soft-covering crabs are surprisingly simple to prepare in your own home.
The sweet and subtle briny flavor of fresh blue crab is usually the essence from the ocean. Legend has it that blue crabs, such as the sea, suffer from the phases from the moon. Within their natural atmosphere, blue crabs begin shedding their outgrown shells around the first full moon of May to get the highly prized and far anticipated restaurant darlingsoft-covering crab.
Scrumptious because they are, picking the little items of meat in the normally unyielding hard shells from the blue crab is better restricted to the individual and also the skilled. Average folks can watch for this springtime moon and allow the crabs do everything. Once molting is finished, the majority of the crab is edible. They're so succulent and juicy they appear to become a small bit of the sea itself.
But timing is important. When the crabs remain within the water, this blissful condition lasts merely a couple of hrs prior to beginning growing another hard covering. To avoid this, they're caught before losing their shells and carefully monitored in holding tanks before the molting is finished. In those days they're whisked in the water and only frozen immediately, or packed in wet paper or straw and shipped live, via sea food purveyors, to restaurants and markets. All of this must happen rapidly because these crabs are only able to survive a couple of days from water.
Periodic soft-covering crabs can be a popular restaurant item, but-due to the requirement for precise harvesting and shipping-the markup is remarkable when they're plated in a restaurant. Fortunately, soft-covering crabs are simple to prepare and prepare in your own home. Cleaning them is simply by a few snips along with a rinse.
Since the crabs need direct heat to provide them their characteristic outer crispness, they shouldn't be steamed or steamed like hard-covering crabs (they'd finish up a saturated mess). Soft-covering crabs take only minutes to prepare, so they are typically simply pan-fried or sauted. However they do lend themselves nicely towards the broiler or grill, too. After that they may be drawn in any direction, from sushi to some salad. They are most generally offered sandwiched between two slices of bread.
When purchasing soft-covering crabs, live ones are the most useful but they are not necessarily simple to find. To decide on the tastiest, make use of your nose. When fresh, they smell neat and astringent, like ocean mist-an appropriate aroma for any delicacy that both captures the romance from the ocean and also the allure of the full moon in spring.
For additional recipes and tips about cooking seafood, check our our Sea food Grilling Guide. Easy Fish recipes. and 5-Component Sea food recipes.