How to Cook Crab

One of my favorite shows on television is Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. It's the only reality show that I have ever gotten into, maybe because it's the only reality show I have seen that isn't staged. I wonder if these guys have some recipes for crab. I would be curious to know how a professional crab fisherman cooks his catch. Crab are tasty little crustaceans that live in every ocean around the world. They also inhabit many rivers, lakes, streams, jungles, and forests. Crab have an exoskeleton, which makes them easy to cook and eat.

Types of Crab

There are 6793 known species of crab. In 2006, the amount of crab consumed worldwide reached 1.5 million tons. Crab make up one fifth of all crustaceans farmed and caught worldwide. Some commonly caught and consumed crab include the Japanese blue crab, sand crab, blue crab, edible crab, Dungeness crab, opilio crab, snow crab, and king crab. Crab is frequently available at grocery stores, both fresh and frozen. There are also several purveyors of fresh crab on the Internet, if you are willing to pay for the shipping.

Cooking Crab

My great uncle lives near Puget Sound, and he used to fish for Dungeness crab using crab pots bated with geoduck clams. He took me along a couple times, to help him set the pots and pull them up. After catching our quota of legal crab, we boiled them and went to work cleaning them. Sitting around a table full of crab, we shucked and ate meat with messy fingers. After the job was done, we were left with a pile of meat, a bucket full of crab shells, and full bellies. The whole experience is a favorite memory of mine.