All these recipes sound very tasty(i'm drooling). I cannot help but wonder why you want to cover up the beautiful sweet flavour of just boiled in saltwater muddies. I cook mine whole,uncleaned just kill them first by stabbing them with a knife just in front of the flap. I also eat them while they are still hot and suck the juice out of the claws. Ben
1 good tip is too only take & cook full muddies as the half empty 1's taste like crap!
ron.
reels screamin aboard Hyper- Active
agree there Blooey, hot crab is just the best, nothing like a few Blue Swimmers, just out of the pot, under the Pergola ,and a few cold beers on a nice Summer's day.
Ron,Originally Posted by ronnien
How do you tell a full muddy from a half full one without cracking the shell open?
Phill
All I want is to catch MORE legal fish!
Weight is one way, full crabs are heavier, but you need one to compare with others. Generally empty (newly shed) crabs have a very clean or shinny green looking shell, and the opposite, scratched chipped and dirty looking are usually good crabs. If you ever get a muddy with barnicles growing on his shell you know he'll be a beauty. (Had his shell a long time)
Where I live on the Clarence, because the crabs get such a flogging off the pro's you are lucky if fifty percent of the crabs you catch are worth keeping. Because of this I have found a bit of a method for sorting the better ones. Underneath the crab, they have little wedge shapes on their shell where on the inside is their lovely body meat segments. If you can push this part of the shell in so it moves, IMO not worth keeping, unless you're dying for a feed. Try these methods for yourself and see how you go.
Try wrapping a whole crab in wet news paper on some hot coals.You usually have to rewet the paper a bit so it doesn't burn too much.MMM make ya wonder why you ever boiled them.
The full ones along with looking brown often have a "Maltese Cross" on their shell ( like the red barons insignia)
Brendan
OOOH yeah sounds good(bit like steaming i guess). Gotta go crabbing me thinks. Ben
yeah.....too bloody expensive to buy em
Hi
Although i don't like mud crabs I always put them in the pot so the underside is facing upwards. Don't know how much difference this makes but you always get lots of gooey stuff at the top of the water. i also add salt-- only natural and two or three spoons of curry powder.
They tell me they taste ok.
Ronnie
took the kids out saturday night & put the pots in, went back sunday morning & had 4 big full bucks in them!
all i do is put enough salt in so it tastes like saltwater & throw the crabs in the pot.
15mins max.
ron.
reels screamin aboard Hyper- Active
MMMMM...... Freshly cooked crab with an ice cold beer, better than sex.
I still can't understand how something that crawls around in the stinkin mangrove mud can taste so good.
Oh for the southerners used to the blue swinners.......it is best if you lightly kill your crab before trying to clean it.........if kept cool and moist muddies will live for many hours out of the water and they are better climbers than the sandies... so tie em up or put a strong lid one em..
Oh and those big claws......they can open up a plastic bucket like a jam tin if they can get a grip......and don't forget that have much better mobility in their claws than a sandy.
NT fisheries have a good page on mud crabs.
As far as bug woks.......no need to buy plow disks......the asian commercial kitchens use huge woks.
I bloke ( Dennis Fong )turned up on a job I was working on with his chineese ( speak no much english) chef to do a cooking demo..... he had a gas burner and a wok... must have been 900mm across................at some point he said........." I bring big wok next time"
cheers
Its the details, those little details, that make the difference.
Yeah Blooey it does steam them it tastes terrific.
old boot just made me think of a rather interesting incident at our place a couple of months ago, indeed Muddies will live for ages out of water if cool enough, now for the story, my Son got 3 good muddies at night, he did not feel like cooking them so put them in a plastic container (not tied up) with a wet towel over them, in the back room and went to bed, next morning I get up, see the bucket and say to myself, OH, 2 good Muddies, my son got up, and looked in the container and asked "wheres the other one?", I thought he was joking and just laughed it off, but he convinced me there was 3, we searched high and low and could not find it anywhere, so I convinced myself it was a joke after all! 2 days later I got a call at work, my daughter had come over to get something and there was a cranky Mudcrab under the lounge that crawled out from behind the TV, so with the aid of a Tennis racket and a bucket she caught the escapee, and I can tell you it was as cranky as all hell when I tried to get it into the freezer to "kill it" for cooking.
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