Picking Meat Out of Cooked Crab

Appears in

Published 1989

The structure of meaty crabs varies from species to species, but the essential parts of claws, legs and large body remain the same.

Set the crab, back down, on a board. Twist and break the claws and legs from the body.
To extract the leg meat: snip along each side of the shell with shears and lift out the meat with a crab pick or skewer.
Crack the claws with the back of a knife, taking care not to crush the meat. Remove the flat membrane; extract the meat with a pick.
To open the body: first lift up the apron flap (tail), then twist it off and discard it.
With the point of a knife, or with your hands, crack the central section of the shell under the tail and pry it apart. (Some crabs, for example the Atlantic blue variety, have a tail that can be used to pull away the under shell from the meat). Pull the meat from the shell.
Discard the soft gills (“dead men’s fingers”) from the sides of the central body section.
Crack the central body section with your hands or cut it in pieces with a knife.
Pry out the meat with a pick or skewer, discarding any small pieces of membrane.
With a spoon, scoop out the soft brown meat (some species have only white meat) from the shell, discarding the head sac. In females, extract the coral-colored roe also.
If serving crab in the shell, cut around the line marking the edge of the shell to form a neat container. Wash the shell thoroughly.