A little searching indicates that the local season doesn’t start until November 15th, but as we walked around Whole Foods today, I saw them and I heard them calling to me: whole cooked Dungeness crabs on ice.
I’m pretty sure I may have actually whimpered like a puppy in public, as Mrs. WeHaveCookies’ reaction to the smell of fish is the stuff of cautionary legend, but she let me get one. $8.99/lb, cleaning and cracking included. It rang up as $17 or so. I’m trying to savor it, and have managed to stop myself at only eating about 1/3, cold from the fridge, with nothing at all on it. After living the last 9 years in Georgia, the flavor was almost enough to make me openly sob with joy.
I think the cats are in the other room right now, switching out their own litter in a desperate (and rather pathetic and sloppy) attempt to barter with me for a few more nibbles.
Geez, man, you’re in GEORGIA and you can’t get CRAB? If you live anywhere near the coast, get yourself a roll of kite string, some chicken necks, a few heavy saltwater fishing weights, a long-handled net and an ice chest (plastic, not one of those foam things).
Beer is optional, sunblock is not.
Go to some saltwater marsh that has a boat dock or a pier that’s just a foot or two above the water. Fill the cooler with a few inches of marsh water – maybe six inches or so. Tie a weight to the end of the string and lower it into the water until it hits bottom. Add another foot or two to the string length and cut it off. Tie a chicken neck to the string near the weight and tied the other end to some part of the pier where it won’t come off easily. Toss neck and weight into the water. Repeat this half a dozen or a dozen times along the length of the pier. About half an hour later, pull up the first string, slowly. As you near the surface, you may see something whitish in the vicinity of the chicken neck. That would most likely be a blue crab hanging on to the delicious chicken neck you just found. Carefully lower the pole net into the water and then, with the chicken neck still submerged but visible, quickly push the pole net under the chicken neck (and the crab(s) around it, and pull up. Hopefully you will come up with a chicken neck and a blue crab or two.
If the crab is less than 5 or 6 inches long, toss it back. Picking it for meat will be more trouble than it’s worth. If it’s big enough, toss it in your cooler.
When you have a dozen or so blue crabs in your ice chest, put the lid on securely and go home. Dump the chicken nekcs and the kite string, keep the weights, but wash the chicken neck and saltwater marsh slime from them, or they’ll stink the place up.
Go home and take a big pot, fill it with water, boil said water with some Zatarain’s crab boil or some Old Bay in it, then take the crabs out of the cooler (they should still be alive) and toss them in the boiling water.
I don’t understand. How can you have ‘the best crab evah’ without Dungeness crab?
I was too busy to go crabbing this year, so I haven’t had any dungees. I’ve thought about getting one from the market, but I worry that a pre-cooked crab won’t be nearly as good as one I catch, kill and boil myself.
I don’t live in Georgia anymore, and to be fair, I am certainly missing some of the Southeast regional cuisine since I’ve moved away. But imho, Dungeness is the creme de la creme of culinary crustaceans.
My husband is from Alaska and we flew up to Juneau this past July for the wedding of one of his best friends. There was an informal pig roast two days before the wedding. The pig was yummy, but the REAL hit were the crabs…for the week leading up to the party, some of the groom’s friends had gone out to check their crab pots daily.
They caught no fewer than SIXTY huge dungees, and showed up to the party with the crabs in a big cooler, a gas stove, two pots, and five pounds of butter. There was one big pot going to steam the crabs (which they cut in half first for convenient), and one to melt the butter.
Pure heaven. I think I ate a crab and a half all by myself.
Season? What is this season? I’m in Washington State, we can get Dungeness any time we want. Live, it’s like three bucks a pound, if you don’t mind boiling your own water and cleaning the thing yourself. And I definitely don’t mind that, because the tomalley is some of the best stuff in the shell. Maybe y’all should consider a prolonged sabbatical northward along the coastline.
Oh, and Evil Captor, as Johnny L.A. says, we’re talking about Dungeness crab here. Other kinds of crab may taste good, but compared to Dungeness, they’re like unseasoned egg white. Dungeness is King. Period.
