Kurt and I each made a Valentine’s dinner menu this week. Mine was pretty ambitious–roasted beet soup, dungeoness crab, and a Toblerone fondue. Unfortunately, killing and cooking a crab was not as simple as my childhood memories crabbing at White Rock had led me to believe.
I was beside myself with the thought of killing 2 crabs that were crawling around in the kitchen sink. At first, I was just going to dump them unceremoniously into a vat of boiling water. It sounded a little mean so I googled a better way of putting the crabs out of their misery. One site suggested to stab it underneath its tail flap with a screwdriver. Another suggested to drown them in fresh water for at least 30 minutes. I tried both without success, and after 2 hours of this plus having Kurt laugh at my expense, we finally just tossed them into the waiting hot pot. Sigh.
Feb 19, 2007 @ 08:46:47
omg! you killed Pinchy! lol.. funniest. dinner. evar
Feb 19, 2007 @ 10:25:10
“……aaaand he’s dead.”
p.s. Pinchy was a lobster
Feb 20, 2007 @ 08:59:22
wow,
i kinda laugh and at the same time i feel sorry for the crab. Dying in boiling water is pretty harsh.
I hope at least it tasted awesome.
Then it would’ve been a useless death.
Feb 20, 2007 @ 15:25:55
It was very hard because in trying to do the humane thing, I wound up lengthening the suffering of the poor crabs. People have told me that there’s “no scientific evidence that crabs feel pain,” but when you see their limbs flail around like that, I’m pretty sure it’s not because they’re indifferent.
Yes, I did have a Homer moment where I wanted to release them back to the wild or keep them as pets…but they were extremely delicious! See Flickr for the photos. One became “Oven-Roasted Dungeoness Crab with Blood Orange Reduction”, and the other “Crab and Saffron Risotto”.
(sniff)…but (yum!)
Feb 21, 2007 @ 23:02:53
Geez, I’d hate to be “Pinchy the Lobster” or crab, rather. Hey, I like your Flickr photos!
Mar 05, 2007 @ 11:07:21
Hi Karen
The folklore is to poke them with one chopstick in the rear but that only seems to work for lobster as one needs to penetrate all the way to the brain for the quick expiry.
Sounds terrible in writing!
The humane way perhaps and most often used for crabsis to rip the shell off. After that, there is a relatively inedible portion that should be removed prior to cooking just behind the lower section of the mouth/throat area plus the crab gills.
Steaming is better than immersion if you want to keep the flavour.
Cheers,
Best regards,
Marcus
By the way, are you using WordPress. If so download the fix as there has been a hacking intrusion.
Mar 08, 2007 @ 17:08:37
Hi Marcus,
Nice to hear from you! I will remember your tips for next time. I was under the impression that you lose the flavourful juices if you cut up the crab before cooking.
I use Movable Type so hopefully my site is not at risk. I have upped the comment spam filters so just found your comment today. I really should make the time to install the comment add-on to add those graphic word-images.