Dungeness Crab Fest
Dungeness Crab Flavor
Dungeness crab ranks alongside Alaskan halibut and sockeye salmon as one of the top seafood options on the West Coast.
“saline, super-clean taste similar to Maine lobster but a softer texture,” Elyse Inamine, https://www.tastingtable.com/
“Unicorn juice,” Anthony Bourdain, referring to the crab butter in a dungeness crab back at the Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. https://youtu.be/jSB53vfz2Oc View the time interval 1:42 to 2:10.
The Peak Season for Peak Crab Quality
To get the best tasting dungeness crab, insist on freshly caught crab during its peak season. It’s best to get them early in the peak season when they’re nice and fat. In northern California, this coincides with the opening of the commercial fishery, in early December. The peak season then extends through to the end of February. However, this year has been different on account of the heavy rains. My local fishmonger in Santa Rosa tells me that the crab season will extend into May this year.
As you move north through B.C. and then into Alaska, the peak season starts later in the year. Summer is the peak season in Alsaka. If you want the plumpest, juiciest and tastiest crab in the middle of summer, then consider buying cooked, cleaned, flash frozen crab from Alaska.
Official Dungeness Crab Seasons
The first point to remember is that only male crabs that measure 6” or more across their carapace may be harvested. These are typically 4 to 5 years old and weigh up to 2 pounds.
In California, the recreational crab season typically opens in early November and then closes on 30 July.
Further north in Oregon the recreational crab season generally extends from December through mid October for coastal ocean harvest from boats, but is open year round for fishing from shore and in the estuaries. In Washington State, the season is open year round for the coastal ocean, but remains closed permanently in specific locations, including the Puget Sound. Even further north in the waters of B.C. and Alaska the crab season is open year round. But again, local closures may be imposed for reasons discussed above.
In California, the opening date for the crab fishery can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example, a delay can be imposed to let the crab’s harvest quality reach an acceptable level, say 25% meat content by weight. Both the commercial and recreational fisheries may remain closed to allow time for the crabs’ shells to harden up after the autumnal molt. A delay may also be imposed to prevent trap lines from interfering with the annual gray whale migration.
After opening, the season may be curtailed by local closures for a variety of reasons. Early closures may be imposed on specific types of fishing gear, to prevent the lines for crab traps from presenting a risk for migrating humpback whales, or due to domoic acid contamination from plankton blooms. So be sure to check online for closures.
Interestingly, the commercial fishery can also be closed due to pricing disputes between fishermen and wholesalers.
Sustainable Fishery
The really cool thing about the dungeness crab fishery is that it appears to be perfectly sustainable with no sign of collapse. In other words, you can enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of indulging in an ecologically friendly harvest when you feast on dungeness crab. As far as I know, this has been true since the inception of the fishery in the nineteenth century.
I will do some further research so that I can back up this claim in future revisions of this article/post.
Availability
While dungeness crab are best when cooked live in their peak season, i.e early winter in northern California through midsummer in Alaska, they can be stockpiled frozen for the whole year. Essentially they are available all year, in principle, if you can find a source.
Here in northern California, you can buy them from several shops and grocery stores.
How many crabs should you cook?
A 2 pound + crab is a good meal for you and your date. About 25% of it will be rich, tasty, satisfying meat that you have to work for.
When caught in peak season, the juiciest and plumpest crabs available will weigh from 2 to 2 and 1/2 pounds. One of these will provide both you and your date a sumptuous and satisfying feast.
Out of that 2 and 1/2 pounds of live crab, the amount of meat you’ll be able to extract is going to be on the order of 8 ounces, or about 20% to 25% of the original. That’s 4 ounces for each of you.
4 oz of this rich, delicious and amazing seafood is quite satisfying and filling especially if you’ve got side dishes on the menu. It’s comparable to a 4 oz filet steak.
How to Cook freshly caught live Dungeness Crab
The photos below shows a live crab. As you can see, the crab is a rich bronze, brown color. Yellow elastic bands holding the claws safely closed (at left).
Option One - Boiled Crab
What you’ll need
A Two Pound Crab
A two pound crab will certainly feed one, but will be plenty for a couple to share.
Stock Pot
You’re going to need a large stock pot with a lid. I recommend one about 16 inches in diameter and 10 inches deep to give ample room for a single crab. You’ll want to give yourself a little bit of splash room or freeboard inside the pot so that you don’t end up scalding yourself as you lower the crab into the water
Boiling Water or Seasoned Stock
You’ll need enough water to entirely cover the crab plus another two inches. There should be at least enough water for the crab to be fully immersed, and for the water to not cool down significantly when the crab arrives. I recommend at least a gallon per crab.
Ice Water Bath
You’ll also need a bowl of ice water on the counter next to the stock pot. You’ll promptly immerse the cooked crab in the ice water at the end of the cooking time in order to 1) arrest the cooking process and 2) to cool the crab just enough for easy handling.
Timer
Use a timer set to ring at 14 minutes. You want to avoid rendering the crab inedible by overcooking.
Tongs
You’ll need a good set of kitchen tongs to securely grasp the crab so you can safely lower it into the boiling water and then remove it promptly to a waiting ice bath. I recommend OXO kitchen tongs.
Boiling Procedure
Prepare the Bath
Bring the water to a rolling boil with the stove burner turned up to its highest setting.
Add the Crab
If cooking multiple crabs, always boil one at a time.
Use sturdy tongs to grasp the crab top and bottom between its legs. With a firm grip, transfer it to the pot and lower it into the boiling water. Start the timer. The boiling will subside as the crab absorbs the heat. Once the boiling resumes, turn the burner down to medium or lower to maintain a simmering boil. Put the lid on the pot.
Boil the Crab
Keep the crab in the pot for 14 minutes, no more no less.
Arrest the Cooking
When the timer rings at 14 minutes, use your trusty kitchen tongs to promptly lift the crab out of the boiling water. Transfer it directly to a large bowl of ice water. Immerse the crab in ice water for about 3 minutes.
Notes on Timing
I always set the timer to 14 minutes for a 2 to 2 – ½ pound crab. I start the timer the moment the crab enters the boiling water. Then at the 14 minute mark I promptly transfer the crab into a waiting ice bath. I only cool the crab in ice water long enough so that I can handle it comfortably — about three minutes.
Option Two – Steamed Crab
The second option for cooking is to set up a double boiler so that you can steam the crab rather than boiling it. You’ll want to steam the crab between 15 and 18 minutes, and then transfer it to an ice bath for another 3 minutes, as described above.
How to Clean a Dungeness Crab
Remove the Tail Bits
First break off the tail segments and pick out all the sharp tail feather bits, i.e. break off the pointed tail, and the sharp underlying spines.
Break Open the Carapace
Whilst holding the crab with its carapace facing down, pry open the carapace, taking care not to spill out its contents: grasp the crab with your thumb tip on the seam at the back of the carapace and pry open the back end of the crab. You want to have the carapace on the bottom so it can catch all the fat and juices that come out of the crab as you pry it open.
It’ll take a little bit of force at first to break the connective tissue, but the cooked crab will come apart easily.
Save the carapace, or crab back, along with its contents, as a holding bowl for the “crab butter.”
Break off the front mandible structure from the crab back to clean it up a bit.
Scoop out the golden crab butter from the lower leggy part and save as much as you can in your crab back bowl. Present the crab back for dipping chunks of bread or garlic toast into the contents, or keep on ice or refrigerate for later enjoyment. Seriously, watch Anthony Bourdain do this in his YouTube video, where he enjoys crab backs at San Francisco’s Swan Oyster Bar https://youtu.be/jSB53vfz2Oc 1:42 to 2:10.
For the moment, set the crab back aside. Now direct your attention to all the guts and innards on top of the leg and claw clusters.
As shown in the photo above there are a few things you need to clean away before serving. Rip out the feather shaped gills, membranes and guts. These are inedible. Then use cold tap water to rinse off all of the remaining innards and greenish paste from off of the underlying meat cells crab’s legs and claws attach to its body.
Double check to make sure that you’ve cleaned off all of the gills and all of the other internal parts so that what you have left is just the light cream colored meat.
Break apart the lower leggy part of the body along its midline into two leg clusters, and arrange the halves on a serving plate. You’ll notice a kind of trough running between the meat cells on either side of the crab. Grasp the bottom half of the crab and just crack it in half along this trough. It’s very satisfying to finally snap the crab bottom in half.
I recommend you now triple check that you’ve cleaned off all extraneous bits of innards.
Each half can then be presented as a single serving for a very satisfying feast indeed.
What you should end up with is shown below: On the upper left, the crab back, or the crab’s upper carapace, which forms a bowl for the “crab butter”. The bowl on the lower left contains some of the extra crab fat. On the plate at right are the two leg clusters.
And now the crab is ready to serve.
How to Eat a Dungeness Crab
The photo below shows the various implements and tools you need to extract all of that meaty goodness.
From left to right: small wooden mallet, assorted seafood picks, nutcracker.
To make eating easier, you can break each of the leg clusters in half again, front to back. Simply grasp the claw and front leg in one hand, and the rear legs in the other and break apart the base of the crab into two portions. This makes it easier to peel away the cartilage membranes that contain the meat cells at the base of the legs.
To extract all the meaty goodness from a dungeness crab, I think the best thing to do is to break apart the base of the crab into leg clusters as I’ve described above. First break it into left and right halves and then break into front and rear quarters.
There are basically four parts of the crab that you need to know about when it comes to getting all the meat out and enjoying the crop to its fullest.
- The meat cells at the base of the legs and claws.
- The knuckles that join the base of the body to the legs.
- The claws, the biggest segments of the crab legs.
- All of the leg segments.
The Meat Cells at the Base of the Legs
You’ll find little chunks or cubes of delicious meat that are separated by a kind of a stiff membrane — cartilage — into a honeycomb arrangement, open at top. The stiff, cartilage membrane is inedible. It’s not something you want to chew on. But it’s flexible and almost clear. You can pick the meat out of these cells, or simply rip apart the thin membranes that separate the meat cells, or press out the little morsels with your thumb.
You may find you can easily extract every last morsel from these cells by breaking apart clusters. Just snap the legs apart and then use your thumbs to squeeze out the meat or use a crab fork to pick it or scoop it out.
The knuckle joints at the base of each leg and claw.
The shell for the knuckles at the base of each leg and claw is quite thick. But there are pretty hefty chunks of meat hidden inside. Either use a nutcracker to crack the knuckles or a small wooden mallet to smash them. Then pry open the broken knuckle shell and pick out the meat.
The leg segments.
Each leg segment is a flexible, slightly flattened tube that’s filled with delicious meat.
Grasp either end of a single leg and crack it open with a combination of twisting and bending. Then pick, scoop and squeeze out the meat.
The Claw
The claw usually contains the largest single chunk of meat within the thickest, hardest shell.
You can use brute force to snap the claw open. Or you can wriggle and press a dinner knife half way through the shell and then snap it open. Or you can use a nutcracker to crack it open. Then pick, scoop or squeeze out the meat as befor
Presentation with Accompaniments
The two best accompaniments for dungeness crab are 1) garlic toast with italian herbs and freshly grated Parmasan cheese – toasted in a 400 F oven for 15 minutes with italian herbs and freshly grated Parmasan cheese, and a soup base such as for a cioppino.
Seasoned Garlic Toast
For garlic toast, there are three rules of thumb: First, use premium bread such as a French baguette. Second, use plenty of butter and freshly chopped garlic. Third, preheat your oven to 400F.
The rest is up to you. But here’s what I do:
Smash the garlic cloves between the flat of a knife and your cutting board to loosen the peels, then remove the peels, and press fresh garlic paste into a bowl. The OXO good grips garlic press works perfectly. Six cloves per loaf is ideal.
Then add room temperature butter to the bowl and mash it together with the garlic. Use half a stick of butter per loaf.
Cut the baguette into two half lengths, then slice each half lengthwise as you would a hotdog bun or submarine sandwich. But don’t slice all the way through. Leave a bread crust hinge.
Open the baguette halves and spread all the garlic infused butter on the open faces.
Sprinkle the open faces with freshly ground black pepper, a pinch of salt, some Italian mixed herbs dried, and some freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
Now you have the option of either toasting the garlic toast open faced under the broiler element (also known as grilling in the UK) or folding the baguette closed and then wrapping it in an aluminum foil pouch.
To form a foil pouch, place the closed length of garlic bread on a slightly longer length of aluminum foil. Then wrap the foil up around the baguette so that its edges meet above the baguette. Fold over and crease the edges of the foil together, and then scrunch up the ends.
A similar procedure works for Italian loaf or slightly larger loaves of fresh bread.
Alternatively, you can slice the larger bread loaves diagonally across every three-quarters of an inch, but not all the way through to the bottom, leaving a hinge of crust between each section.
Spread a little of the garlic butter evenly on either face of each slice then wrap in a foil pouch.
Place in an oven at 400F and bake for 10 to 25 minutes depending on your preference for soft or crispy garlic toast.
Cioppino
Cioppino is a simple tomato based seafood soup. Prepare it just prior to cooking your crab, and then provide separate bowls for the cioppino and the cooked crab.
That’s right! It’s far better to serve the crab separately from the cioppino!
Cook the shrimp, mussels, calamari, clams and morsels of fish filet as you would for Cioppino because all of that seafood will benefit from the broth. Then serve the leg clusters on the side.
Aesthetic Accompaniments
Music
Ludwig van Beethoven – Violin Concerto in D major Op, 61
Felix Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto in E minor
Wine
Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, or Pinot Noir, Russian River Winery of Sonoma County
Alternatives to Live Crab
I must emphasize, you want to catch the crab yourself or buy today’s catch. If it’s kept in an aquarium or in some kind of holding pen, there’s no way to keep the crab well fed. Instead, the crab must rely on his own fat reserves. The longer you keep the crab, the more fat he must burn and hence the lower the quality of his meat. But you can’t always obtain live crab that’s been caught that day.
So the next best option to live crab caught that day is to buy crab that’s been cooked the day it was caught. And there are basically two ways of buying cooked crab. It may be flash frozen on the boat immediately after being cooked, or cooked by the grocer or fishmonger then kept on ice.
Have them cleaned at the counter, then bring home and eat as is.
If you bought it cooked and frozen, then thaw it in a refrigerator overnight. Once thawed, break apart the crab into leg clusters as described above. Steam for eight minutes and serve.
*Notes on the Peak Season in California
A host of factors determine when the peak season for meat quality occurs. In Northern California, male crabs molt in the fall. Then it takes them a few weeks to grow into their new shells. That brings us to late December and perhaps the entire month of January. Only then will you find the plumpest crabs with the juiciest and richest meat. Again, this is when the crabs are at their fattest and tastiest.
You can still get superb crab meat in the following months of February and March, but the quality will be in decline. As you run into spring, the meat quality plummets as the crabs enter their breeding season, when male crabs become increasingly intent on mating rather than on fattening up.
