Cooking Crabs

[alimo88]

Hi All

How do I cook fresh blue swimmer crabs?

Alimo88

[ROB80]

l prefer to put them to sleep in an ice slurry whilst fishing. when i arrive home, i clean them by putting my thumb under the tail on the underside of the buck and lift it towards the rear taking the carapice off completely. i then house the guts etc out with fresh water. Whilst i clean the catch i have a pot of salt water that i collected well out into the bay (or you can make your own by adding a heap of kitchen salt) on my three ring burner cooking away until it boils. i then add the crabs minus guts carapice etc to the boiling water for 5-8 mins depending on the size. i then place then into a clean fresh water ice slurry to firm the flesh and cool them down. they are now ready to eat. all this of course needs to be done whilst sucking on a cool beverage og your choice

[shubeej]

hi alimo88 , congrats firstly for being the position of having caught some sandies , i have never failed with my method of cooking crabs , so here goesby the time you get back from crabbing the sandies are normally dead. i get a suitable pot & boil up water & add heaps of salt get it rapidly boiling again & then place crabs blue side upside down dont overload pot this is something you will have to judge yourself ,then once the water comes back to boil ,boil for exactly 8 minutes then take then out & put in some cold water or icy water if like ,take them out after a couple of minutes & lay them now red side face down for about 15 minutes ,this must drain excess water out of flesh. fridge them or eat them .good luck shubeej.

[shayned]

Try adding a little sugar as well, also try adding rough chopped carrot, onion and bay leaves to the water when cold for a slightly different flavour.
Or search for chilli crab recipes on here. Yum!

[madman1]

The best way to chill the crabs rapidly is put them into a salt water ice slurry as it retains the salty taste and doesn't was it away as a fresh water slurry would.

Shubeej is right on the money with eight minutes.

Congrats on the catch.

I will be getting a few on Friday / Saturday morning hopefully.

Dont forget to take out a large bucket of around 20 litres which has a lid on it so you can cook the crabs in the water from which you caught them. You cant beat it.

Cheers


Mark

[ROB80]

still prefer to cook the after cleaning. i reckon they taste sweeter as you not boiling their guts etc through theflesh whilst cooking. each to their own though

[alimo88]

Thanks everybody for the tips

I will let you all know how I went

Alimo88

[freddyfish]

Agree about cleaning first although some people enjoy the iodiney taste the guts leave. Love em either way .

Brad

[DNO40]

I tend to stick with the beverage of my choice and let the missus worry about cooking the crabs.



DNO

[Kendall249]

Plenty of saltl, about 15mins for sandies and 20mins for muddies.

[Freeeedom]

Cook for 12 minutes in salty water for me, and then ice down in more salty water for about 30 minutes to make sure there is a bit of salt around the meat when you eat them. I find them a bit insipid if they are cooled in fresh water. An alternative is to eat them hot, straight out of the salty cooking water - a different taste altogether. Love em both ways!
Cheers Freeeedom

[JasonT]

I'm not a fan of hot crabs or prawns!

Gotta be cold!

Stuffed between 2 chunks of fresh bread with butter, salt and pepper...


mmmmm crabs...
drool........ (homer simpson :-) )




JT