Dressed Crab (How to Dress a Cooked Crab)
Dressed crab is a popular dish in the UK, and it's not hard to see why. Crab meat is succulent and flavourful, and when dressed and seasoned with salt, pepper and lemon, it makes for a delicious seafood treat. We'll teach you how to dress a crab. Follow the instructions on how to break it open and extract the white and brown meat, as well as how to present the crab meat back into the cleaned shell.We'll also provide some tips on where to buy and how to choose a cooked crab in the blog post.
Ingredients
- 1 Whole Cooked Crab
- 1 Lemon (cut in 1/2 for juices, save other 1/2 for wedges )
- Pinch Salt and Black Pepper
- Dill (to garnish)
- Mayonnaise
Instructions
- 1
Defrost: The instructions for this dressed crab are for a pre cooked whole crab.If you buy your cooked crab frozen, always defrost it in the fridge overnight before preparing it.Rinse the crab in cold water before starting.
- 2
Legs: Remove crabs legs by holding the bottom leg socket and snapping them backwards away from the crab.
- 3
Claws: Do the same with the Claws.
- 4
Reserve: Keep legs and claws to one side
- 5
Abdomen: Pull back to remove the abdomen off the crab's body
- 6
Push: Place your fingers on the underside of the shell and use your thumbs to push up against the crab shell and the body will detach.
- 7
Brown Meat: Remove the gills (aka dead man's fingers or lungs) from inside the shell or they may be on the body. Also, remove the stomach sack. These are bitter and not tasty at all, throw them away.
- 8
Mouth: Remove the crab's mouth by pushing it down hard until it cracks.
- 9
Body: Scrape the brown meat from the shell and around the body into a bowl.Cut the body in half with a sharp knife. Remove brown meat from the inside of the body.
- 10
White Meat: Once you have removed all the brown meat, start a new bowl for the white meat.Use a pick to remove the hidden white meat from the inside of the body.
- 11
Pull: Remove the white meat from the legs, simply crack and pull, you can also use pick.Flake it as you go, making sure you remove any cartilage or shell.Keep 2 of the thin legs to use as decoration on the dressed crab.
- 12
Crack: Use the back of a knife to crack the crab's claws.
- 13
Claw Meat: Remove the meat from inside the claw.
- 14
Flake: Break the claw meat up as there will be hard white cartilage inside which needs to be removed.
- 15
Season: You should now have two separate bowls. One with white meat and one with dark meat.Season to your taste with lemon juice, salt and pepper. You can add mayonnaise or other herbs if you like.
- 16
--- Dressing the crab ---
- 17
Clean out the shell
- 18
Snap: Use a spoon to remove the outer shell, follow the line around the shell, pushing up until it snaps.
- 19
Sides: Push the brown meat into either side of the shell.
- 20
Middle: Add the flakes of white meat in the middle between the brown meat.
- 21
Garnish: Finish with the lower leg joints you saved earlier and garnish with some dill.
- 22
Chill: Keep it chilled until serving.
- 23
Serve: Wonderful served with as part of a Seafood Platter.
Cook it from the original
This recipe comes from flawlessfood.co.uk. Their page has the author’s own photos, notes and tips — the best place to cook it from.
Open the recipe on flawlessfood.co.uk