Do You Know How To Pick a Crab?

Knowing where to find or how to pick a crab is a skill that many people don’t have. Though, for many of us living along the Norwegian coastline, extracting the meat from a brown crab is second nature. In fact, many men, women, and children enjoy hunting for brown crabs themselves.

However, most people will encounter a brown crab in the safety of their kitchen. By then, you don’t have to worry about getting pinched, as a lot of the time, the pincers are removed by the fishermen shortly after catching them.  

Therefore, a more relevant question than ‘how do you catch a brown crab?’, is ‘how do you pick apart a brown crab?’. 

How to Pick a Crab: Step by Step Guide

We have heard of people refusing to purchase brown crab on the basis of them not knowing how to get the delicious meat out of the cooked crustacean.

This reasoning denies you of one of the most delicious meats you will ever taste. Anyway, once you have picked a brown crab once, it is not a difficult process and one where the rewards are plentiful. 

If you are one of the people mentioned above, or just someone who is daunted by their first-ever crab experience, then we are here to help. 

This short guide on how to get the delicious meat out of this delightful crustacean will help both you and please whoever is dining with you.  

Here is how you pick a cooked crab. 

Step One

You can make a good start by breaking off the claws and legs. You should be able to twist these off with just your hands. The joints and knuckles should also be broken apart in this instance. 

You can put these aside for now. We will come back to these meaty treasure troves a little later. 

Step Two

Place the crab back shell down on a secure surface and break off the tail flap. You should then be able to press your thumbs upwards and remove the body from the shell. 

You can now remove the rich brown meat from the shell using a small spoon. 

This meat has more fat in it than the white meat that you will get from the claws and body. The rich flavor in the brown meat lends itself perfectly to sauces and also goes beautifully on sourdough bread as a pate. 

Step Three 

Remove the small flaky gills from the body and dispose of them.  Then, you can take a sharp knife and cut the body in half. You can then take out the wonderful white meat from all the crevices here using a lobster pin. There is usually a nice amount of meat in this area. 

Step Four

Now, back to those wonderful claws and legs. Crack them, using a knife or another large implement, and remove the meat. This is probably the hardest part of the process, but the rewards inside definitely make it worth it. 

This is where a lot of the most scrumptious stuff is. 

Storing Crab Meat 

Now that it has been cooked and removed, you can store the crab meat in your refrigerator for about four days. 

The good news for all you people who like to batch cook meals in reserve is that crab meat can also be stored in the freezer for a later date. 

Conclusion

Eating crabs may require more effort than your average meal, but as the old saying goes, nothing worth having ever comes easy. 

You definitely shouldn’t be put off by the process though, as once you have done it a couple of times, it is a process that becomes second nature. 

Now that you know how to pick a brown crab, you have a skill that will come in useful for a variety of dishes, or just when you’re peckish and fancy a delicious snack.