How to boil crab
Knowing how to boil crab gives you the best texture and the best crab experience. Picking the crab properly is an important part of the process too.
Crab - good all year round
Crab is healthy food, low in fat, and works in all sorts of recipes. Crab tastes good all year round, although many people find it especially good in early summer, in May and June, and in early autumn, in September and October.
As with so much other food, it is important to prepare the crab properly if you want the best possible flavour. That applies not least to how you boil and pick the crab.
Choose the right crab
If you catch your own crab, it is important to remember that there is a big difference in how much meat there is inside the shells. Once a crab is two years old, it moults its shell once a year. After moulting, it needs several months to fill up with crab meat again, to become what is known as fully meated.
So when you are choosing a crab, it is important to pick the one, or the ones, with an old, hard shell. That increases the chance of it being fully meated and makes for a successful crab meal.
Boiling crab, as easy as 1-2-3
Boiling live crab calls for generous amounts of water with a little salt in it. The water should be at a rolling boil when the crabs go into the saucepan. After a brief return to the boil, leave them to simmer gently for 20-25 minutes, depending on size. As a rough rule of thumb, the crab is done when the small claws are easy to pull off it.
Once you have lifted the crab out of the saucepan, it is a good idea to leave it to cool on its back. That keeps as much liquid as possible inside the shell and gives you juicy, good crab meat.
It is important not to put too many crabs in the saucepan at once, and just as important to let the water come back to a proper boil between each batch. Otherwise you risk the water becoming too cool and the crab not being properly cooked.
Before you can eat
Before you can get on with the eating itself, the crab has to be picked properly. To make sure you remove the parts that have to go, such as the stomach sac and the gills, it is worth taking a look at how to pick a crab.
Some people like crab best with nothing more than white bread and mayonnaise. Crab meat is versatile, though, and can be used in dishes inspired by cuisines from all over the world.
If you want to try crab in a new way, we can recommend
See also our collection of crab recipes.
