Fork and Gobble It: Crab Chronicles - "Live Crabs!"

I've sung the praises of the seafood department at Hmart in Edison many times. Their live fish section is something you rarely see and they usually have a large bin of very lively blue crabs for sale by the pound. This has caught my eye more than once and last week I picked up a few pounds (they usually run about 5 – 6 to the pound) to turn into dinner. Steamed crabs for dinner requires serious devotion, blues have a lot of flavor, a lot of shell to work through, and not a lot of meat for all that work. I decided to take a different tack and turn all that flavor into a tomato sauce for pasta. This still would be a lot of work but my return would be much greater for the effort.

I got the crabs home and started to work cleaning them.


This requires removing the "apron" from the bottom shell of the crab, pulling off the top shell, pulling out the feathery lungs from either side of the interior, and removing the mouth, face, and stomach from the little critter, all while it's still alive. A well placed grip on the back of the shell keeps your fingers out of reach of those claws and then it's quick and nimble work to get it done without being pinched. Cut the remaining body into two halves and they are good to go. It is possible to buy the crabs already cleaned and frozen, but I find the freshness is just not the same.

From here it is simply a matter of building a tomato sauce over the sauteed crab bodies. For 1 ½ pounds of crab use the following recipe:

-1 ½ pounds of cleaned blue crabs
-8 cloves of garlic peeled and sliced
-1 cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
-2 Tbsp Kosher or sea salt
-¾ Tbsp crushed red pepper

In a pot 8qts or larger, heat the olive oil and saute the garlic, red pepper, and salt, until the garlic colors golden. Add in the crabs and saute over high heat until they have turned bright red.


Once the crabs have turned red and are fully cooked through add:

-1 cup dry red wine

Bring the liquid to a boil and keep it there for a minute to cook off the alcohol.

Add:
-4 ~ 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes plus one full can of water.

Bring this to a simmer and keep it there for about 90 minutes. This will allow extraction of flavor from the shells and meat inside the crabs. This sauce has a very intense flavor derived from those shells and unlike the crab cakes in my previous story, can stand up to stronger flavors like tomato, pepper, basil, etc..


At this point I remove the crab bodies with tongs, (reserve them if you like) get a pot of salted water going and cook the pasta of my choice. Reserve a little of the pasta water during the final minutes of cooking. It will get added back to the sauce to give it body. Put the drained pasta into a sufficiently large saute pan and add an appropriate amount of sauce. I like to undercook my pasta by a couple of minutes in the water and finish that cooking in the sauce so the pasta picks up more flavor from the sauce.

For example, if the specified cooking time is 8 minutes, I cook the pasta in the boiling water for 6 minutes, reserve pasta water before draining, and finish those 2 minutes cooking the pasta in the sauce thinned with a little water. At this point I would add:

-½ cup of fresh basil leaves torn into large shreds
-1 -2 ounces of good Extra Virgin Olive Oil
-8 ounces of jumbo lump Crab meat (optional)

I didn't add the lump crab this time, but served the cooked crab bodies on the side to pick on and suck on as they still have a lot of flavor.

Traditionally grated cheese would not be added here as seafood and dairy aren't usually mixed in Italian cooking, but I say do as you wish.


Since this is a tomato/crab based dish, my wine choice would be something both acidic and medium bodied. I went with a 2008 Rex Hill Willamette Valley Pinot Noir from Oregon. The bright cherry/red currant flavors and spice met very well with this dish. 2008 was an excellent vintage for Willamette Valley and this versatile wine deserves a hearty recommendation.

The yield on this recipe makes more sauce than you need for one meal and it freezes very well so that the effort exerted once can provide several great meals afterwards. Although I'll probably regret making this comment........ That is nothing to be crabby about. (Ugggh!)