How to Prepare Live Dungeness Crab

Marylanders go all ga-ga for blue crab and Alaskans swear by Alaskan King crab, but when it comes to sweet meat, delicate flavor and melt-in-your-mouth buttery texture, none of them can hold a candle to the Pacific Coast’s claim to fame, the Dungeness crab. From mid-November to June, West Coast restaurants put live Dungeness crab on their menus, and backyards up and down the coast turn into makeshift crab shacks. This year, the Dungeness crab season started late – as late as January 15 for many parts of California – leaving seafood lovers waiting for their favorite delectable treat, but we’re full into Dungeness crab season now, and the quality of the harvest is absolutely amazing. If you’ve never prepared live Dungeness crab, these instructions provide a general guideline.

How to Buy Live Dungeness Crab

For starters, note that the title of this section is how to buy LIVE Dungeness crab. If you don’t live on the West Coast, general wisdom has been that the only way you could really enjoy fresh Dungeness crab in season was to buy your crabs already steamed and ready to eat. These days, thanks to the Internet and great shipping lanes, you can buy live Dungeness crab from a seafood market online and have it delivered to your doorstep.

If you buy Dungeness crab this way, it will be delivered to you on ice (or with insulated frozen gel packs) in an insulated cooler. It may or may not still be alive when it reaches you, but it will still be fresh and ready to cook. It’s vital to cook it on the same day it arrives – preferably within a few hours – so place your order to take that into account. That is, if you plan to serve fresh Dungeness crab for a dinner party Friday night, order it from a seafood market that will ship it live for delivery on Friday.

How to Cook Fresh Dungeness Crab

Many online recipe sites will tell you to cook Dungeness crab by “submerging it completely in boiling, salted water”. We prefer this method:

1.       Put 1 to 2 inches of water into a large steamer pot. Add a teaspoon or two of salt.

2.       Place a steaming rack in the water. If you don’t own a steaming rack, improvise one by coiling a length of aluminum foil and shaping it into a figure eight in the bottom of the pot.

3.       Bring the covered pot of water to a boil.

4.       Place the crabs in a single layer on the rack. Cover and steam for about 8 minutes per pound of average crab weight. That is, if the average crab weight is 2 pounds, steam for 16 minutes.

5.       Remove the cooked Dungeness crab from the steamer pot using tongs. Let them cool until you can handle them without burning your fingers.

Preparing Cooked Dungeness Crab

1.       Turn the crab over on its back. Pull off the triangular belly flap.

2.       Turn the crab over. Insert your thumb between the body and shell at the open space left by the belly flap and pull the top of the crab shell off in one piece.

3.       Twist off the claws and legs. Crack them open with a hammer or nutcracker and pick out the meat

4.       Break off the crab’s mouth, and remove the lungs and colored connective tissue.

5.       Rinse away the internal organs under running water.

6.       Split the body in half and pick out the meat.

Serve the picked meat with melted butter, aioli or another dipping sauce.

If you’re not up to the task of preparing live Dungeness crab, you can also order cooked fresh Dungeness crab from an online seafood market and have it delivered to your door ready to be heated and served, or used in other recipes.