At the recent L.A. Cold/Spine OctDoper Fest, I went into an asian seafood restaurant. The lower halves of the front windows displayed “fresh” seafood. But I wonder how fresh?
The crabs were stacked like cordwood and almost all of them were quite obviously dead. (I did see one on top that was moving a little.) So here they have a bunch of dead animals in a tank of water. How long do they “keep”?
Oops. This should be in GQ.
Mod help?
My first thought?
“Depends on the prostitute.”
Carry on.
Ooh, I don’t think you want to eat crabs that have been dead for even a little while. At least, that’s how Baltimoreans approach crab eating. Where I live, we mostly eat steamed crabs, which are alive right up until you dump the poor old things in the water.
I’m not sure how they get that canned crab meat that you use in crabcakes and crab salad, but I bet those crabs aren’t dead for too long before their meat is picked, either.
Conventional wisdom says that dead crabs will make you sick. I have a feeling that I’ve eaten some steamed crabs in my life that may have already been dead before they hit the water, but probably not for too long, as I never suffered any ill effects.
Anyway, if I were you (to be on the safe side), I wouldn’t eat dead crabs at all.
If I steamed live crabs tonight, and had leftovers and refrigerated them, I would have no problem eating them tomorrow night. The next night, probably not.
Don’t buy dead crabs.
I agree with samclem. I’ve tried them after about 3 days, and found the meat kind of stringy. If that is the case, you can always make dip out of it. Taste was OK, but wouldn’t recommend keeping it any longer than that.
What samclem said.
My personal rule of thumb is that if they ain’t moving when I buy them I don’t buy them. They should be alive right up to the time you dump them into the boiling water.
Once they’re cooked, they’ll keep for 24 hours or so.
Zap!
I didn’t buy a crab there. Oi wants me custaceans wigglin’! But I doubt they were going to just throw them away. I assume they would cook them up eventually, but how long can they stay dead in the tank before they go from “not as fresh as the one I had in Washington” to “Hey! This tastes like rotting flesh!”? They must have had hundreds of them.
Chinese generally will not buy dead crabs. If they do, it’s at a steep discount and eaten right away (same day). Live crabs have a very different taste than a dead one. My wife, who is Chinese, can spot live cooked crab versus an already dead crab served to her before she takes the first bite.
Along the same lines as the OP -
I was waddling around an open market in Boston once, and came across a vendor selling raw oysters on the 1/2 shell. While I’m not a fan of these things, some people do enjoy them. But, I noticed that the oysters waiting to be cracked open were sitting in burlap bags like sacks of potatos…in the late morning sun…without ice. This didn’t seem to bother the customers. Come to think of it, the seagulls were pretty interested too.
Moderator’s note:
You got it! This sounds well suited to a documented, authoritative answer on safe food handling. Not that anecdotal evidence isn’t compelling. Have I ever mentioned the 3 days of projectile vomiting after eating spoiled scallops…?
TVeblen,
for IMHO
I am biased, Puget Sound is in my backyard and I enjoy many fresh delicacies that would make a Nebraskan salivate. In fact, last weekend I enjoyed fresh Dungeness crab caught and slaughtered in the same day.
[pacifist hijack] Anyone know how to put the poor crabs out of their misery prior to their final plunge into the boiling cauldron? [/pacifist hijack]
I occasionally encounter a vendor peddling questionable seafood and before I purchase, I rely on my nose to judge the edibility of the seafood. If it smells bad, it is! A fresh crab/oyster/steamer clam (yum) won’t smell fishy. In my experiences, the dead/dying crab Johnny describes will have a distinct odor of decay.
I seem to recall another SD post where the nose was used to determine the condition of refrigerated food, I think your schnoz works with “fresh” seafood too 
Woohoo, I love vindication!
Follow your nose, it always knows 
Oysters can be dead before you eat them. Raw is dangerous. We have oyster roasts here, which have steamed oysters. However, crab and lobster, must be cooked alive or recently dead. Perhaps some one can explain the exact reason, but I believe a chemical reaction takes place once they’re dead that makes their flesh toxic. Shrimp and crawfish are also crustaceans, I believe, but they don’t have to be cooked live.
Two ways:
Either kill them quickly just before throwing them in the boiling water (knife or spike through the brain seems to be the most effective way) or put them in the freezer.
This second method is the one I was taught to use in catering college. I was told that it put them in a coma (or somesuch) so they didn’t feel any pain when they hit the water.
You put them in the freezer till they stop moving around but clearly aren’t dead then pull them out and throw them in the water immediately.
Personally I couldn’t see how being frozen solid then boiling alive was preferable to just boiling alive so I used to just put the spike through their brains
Sounds like a great idea but where the hell is a crab’s brain?
A few times my in-laws in Maine have shipped down live lobsters. The rule with those is to cook them within 24 hours of packing.
Similarly, when we’ve been asked to bring some home, if it’ll take longer than 24 hours for us to drive home, we cook the beasts and pick out the meat.
And as to killing them before boiling… why bother? Their brains are cooked to death in seconds. But trying to decapitate them first is definately messy and probably more painful.
(I had a friend who created a crayfish farm when we were young. We took a few choice ones and cooked them up. When we told a neighbor kid about it, he was aghast that we boiled them alive. He too suggested decapitating them. But 4" crayfish don’t have much discernable as a head in the first place. 
)
Don’t forget the recipe for fixing soft-shelled crabs:
l. Cut off their face…!! :eek:
From: http://www.highdesert.com/food/todaysspecial/lobster/
"Lobsters have a chain of nerve centers running down their longitudinal center. Starting in the midline, where the chest meets the tail, cut toward the head. Then go back to the tail/chest junction and slice toward the tail.
A mallet can force the knife through if necessary. The whole process should not take more than 10 seconds.
Crabs are different. They have two main nerve centers, in their middle front and middle rears. Again, use a mallet to crack through the shell with a pithing instrument and destroy the centers. Or quickly remove the animal’s carapace, or top shell, before slicing through the centers, if your knife isn’t sharp enough."
Personally I usually just jab them through the top of the shell in the middle of the front and the back.
That said crabs and lobsters are basically big arthropods and have very similar nervous systems. Most scientists agree that they don’t really have the ability to feel pain - you might as well feel sorry for the flies and mosquitoes your squish.