The cooking process also makes the meat change into the classic taste and color of crab meat that you’re used to. This is important to kill the harmful bacteria found ona crab’s shell, loosen the meat, and make the meat edible. That does not mean that you should cook your crabs for the shortest amount of time possible! Cook your crabs for at least 10 minutes or until the shell is red. It turns out that boiling crabs yielded more meat than steaming because of the higher water content.
It found that crabs cooked for 8 minutes yielded more meat than those cooked for 10 to 12 minutes. Interestingly enough, the same study found the longer you cook crabs, the less meat you end up with. It’s also much easier to pick a crab when it isn’t too hot to touch. This makes picking the crab much easier if you wait a bit after cooking. When the crab cools, this hardened meat separates from the shell. Cooking affects the meat’s texture and color.Ĭooking the crab makes it meat harden. Crabs may shed their claws while being cooked alive due to the stress involved. This can be as low as 3 minutes if you are steaming a crab rather than boiling it. A few estimates say that crabs will live for at most 5 minutes after they are put in a pot. More studies need to be done on how long crabs live for after they are put in the pot. Steaming crabs expose them to consently high temperatures throughout the cook, resulting in a quicker death. I have an article on the pros and cons of boiling crabs you can read here.īecause of this slow rise in heat, we can assume that crabs live for a longer period of time in the pot when they are boiled instead of steamed. Boiling, on the other hand, the temperature slowly rises throughout the cook and is colder at the top of the pot. With steaming, the heat is equally distributed throughout the entire pot for the duration of the cook. This temperature varies depending on the cooking process.
Crabs are exposed to around 250° F for 8 to 15 minutes.
They found that by either steaming or boiling the crab, they are exposed to temperatures of 250 degrees Fahrenheit. First, understand what happens when you cook crabs.Ī study by the Journal of Aquatic Food Product Technology thoroughly explains the process of cooking crabs. Some readers may find this information unsettling.
COOKING BLUE CRAB HOW TO
So, let’s go over how to get around cooking crabs alive and still have quality crab meat.ĭisclaimer: This article goes into detail about cooking and de-shelling crabs. I know some people who won’t eat crabs because of this cooking practice. However, I can’t help but wonder if there is a more humane way to go about this. You don’t want to eat a crab that died long before being cooked, because the bacteria on its shell caused the meat to go bad. If you have ever been to a crab feast and eaten an odd-tasting crab, this is probably the reason why. To give this bacteria as little time as possible to negatively affect the meat, it’s common practice to cook crabs alive or shortly after death. So, I did some research and came to a conclusion:īecause crabs are bottom feeders, they tend to harbor large amounts of pathogens which cause their meat to deteriorate quickly after death. It’s something I’ve grown up with, and never really stopped and wondered about until now. If you’re like me, you’ve stopped and wondered why we cook Blue Crabs, Dungeness Crabs, and other types of shellfish alive.
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