As some of you will no doubt have realised, I like to eat things, particularly things I can gather or catch for free.
I’m thinking of expanding my experience in this regard by eating shore crabs.
I can easily catch these by the bucketload within walking distance of my home (and in clean, safe waters) - for the most part, they’re not big enough to cook and serve in their shells as whole crab, but I understand it’s quite possible to make a good soup of them - I’ve certainly seen smaller crabs than I will typically catch offered for sale in Spanish fish markets (they were different species, but still very small)
So my question is this: When you make crab bisque (or indeed any seafood soup, starting with smallish fish and shellfish), is the whole notion of cleaning obsolete? I remember seeing Rick Stein make stock from very small fish cooked whole without gutting or scaling, so I guess it’s just one of those things you try not to think too hard about when you’re eating them (like ‘deveining’ shrimp - sometimes people don’t bother).
But with crabs, the gills (‘dead men’s fingers’) are supposedly not to be eaten - but if I’m making a soup or stock from small whole crabs, they’re going to be impossible to separate out and anyway, when people eat soft-shell crabs, they’re eating the whole thing, presumably uncleaned and unpurged anyway, aren’t they?
I think looking up some recipies for gumbo might serve you well. I’ve had some with various crab parts. I’m no seafood expert, but people that cook gumbo seem to be.
From the book of Rick himself - Shore Crab Bisque.
The recipe itself calls for cooking the crabs whole, chopping, removing the claws then pureeing in a food processor and pushing through a sieve - no cleaning, no removing bits apart from the claws.
I guess it’s the “Try not to think about what’s in here” School of thought.
I guess if we were to think about it, we’d probably comfort ourselves with notions that crabs have quite compact digestive systems and that at any one time, there’s probably not a massive digestive load in there - in other words, you don’t have to eat too much poo.
Yeah, and I’d guess that they shit themselves when they get caught, as well. I know I would… 
There was a thread here a few weeks back where they were talking about some Spanish dish that contained very small crabs whole or something…
I can’t help you with the shore crabs, but I can tell you that the gills and mouth parts of soft-shell Atlantic blue crabs are usually removed before cooking.
That would be me, but I don’t think I got any definitive answer on it.
Thanks - that’s quite useful, as shore crabs are quite similar.
I’ve heard of storing crabs in a bucket of sea water for several hours before cooking them, presumably so they empty their digestive tract out. Is this a common approach?
Daniel
Certainly I’ve heard of people doing that with other crustaceans, molluscs too.
Well, I tried eating the shore crabs today and they were pretty good. Details here:
http://www.atomicshrimp.com/eat