I am originally from Maryland, now located in Northern California.
I grew up with Chesapeake Blue Crab, and am very comfortable with cooking and cleaning them.
A friend just gave me several Dungeness crabs, and I’m thinking of making a traditional Maryland style Cream of Crab soup.
Are there any differences in how you clean them? The crabs are already cooked.
Also, are there any significant flavor differences between Dungeness and Blue that I might need to compensate for?
Thanks in advance.
There was a recent thread by Johnny LA in which the flavor the two crabs was compared.
I’ve never cleaned a blue crab, but Dungenness are easy. I cook them whole. When they’re cooked, I pull off the back shell. Most of the guts pull away with it, but I scoop out any that remain behind, then pull off the gills around the edges of the body. Some people rinse them off to get all of the crab guts out, but I don’t mind a little bit of that flavor. Once you’ve cleaned the crab, most people cut the body in half - it narrows down right in the centerline for an easy cut - and then serve each half with the body and legs attached.
I live on the eastern shore of MD but work on the west coast and in Alaska, and I recently had dungeness crab for the first time. I cleaned it just like I would have a blue crab and it worked out fine. If you grew up picking blue crabs dungies will be a cinch.
The flavor is a little different but would be perfectly suited for a Maryland-style cream of crab soup, IMO.
Yup, just got em cleaned - they were a breeze. Much easier. They yield a LOT more meat per crab, naturally. Think I have about 2# picked and cleaned, now to turn them into delicious soup.
Thanks!
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Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society.