Crab Prep: Crab 101
Hey everyone! Welcome back. It's been a long time. A lot has changed for me personally in the last couple of years. We moved to a new home, the kitchen is; how do I put it? pretty nice, I finally have a space that is big enough for all of the kitchen toys and food photography to happen
Today we are going to go through what I think is the beginning of a great summer dish that is a perfect balance between European technique, and a slight Middle Eastern & Caribbean influence. Over the last few years, I have practised using Middle eastern ingredients and techniques that have really started to help me better understand what I want to do with my dream restaurant, which I hope will come sooner rather than later.
We are using Dungeness crab which is EXPENSIVE, though COVID had a lot to do with that. The crab will be cooked in a Bouillon or water bath. In the Caribbean we do it, the Cajuns do it, and the French do it. It’s interesting how every culture has a similar style but yet so different, it's the perfect example of the phrase “ same same but different”.
Let's get to it
Ingredients
2 Dungeness Crabs
3L Water
50g Salt
10g Thyme
½ Orange
80g Lemon juice
1g Black Pepper
10pc All Spice
30g Peel Garlic
Crab Stock
600g Crab Shells
1.5L Water
4 Cloves Garlic
1 Medium Sized Onion
1 ½ Carrot
5 Roma Tomatoes
1 Orange zest & Juice
50ml Olive Oil
Method:
Grab those beauties and give them a little scrub with a small brush or a fresh green scrubbie. This will remove any excess dirt that may be on it. You should always clean your food/veggies before using them.
Put all ingredients into the pot except the crab and bring the water to a slightly aggressive simmer. Once it has started doing that, take your crabs and carefully put them in the water. Be very careful as they may act a little wild and fidgety. If you are worried about how the crab will react you can place them in a freezer for thirty minutes prior. This will put them in somewhat of a comatose state.
Boil the crab for 15 minutes, while this is going on let's get an ice bath going on, so load up a bowl or container of ice, water and salt. Yes, more salt, you want to add enough to make it taste like the ocean, this ensures it's well seasoned.
Some chefs will tell you to separate the legs from the body and cook them in a different pot because legs and body obviously don't cook the same but we are doing this under the pretence that not everyone has that kind of time and space.
Take the crabs out and place them in the ice bath, once it's chilled, separate the legs from the body, and this is where it gets messy. We will remove the back from the body, grab a towel and a bowl and put it on over your cutting board to absorb the mess. Keep all the liquid from inside the crab, we are gonna throw that into the stock. Keep the back separate, we are gonna wash it and use it as a plate.
Take the body and cut it into halves, if it's a big one maybe cut them into four pieces.
Using scissors, cut the top and bottom of each segment of the legs and reserve the flesh and shells in separate containers.
For the stock cut all veggies and reserve. Get all the shells you just cleaned and put them in a large pot with the oil and cook them on low to medium heat, try and get a little colour out of them, then add your onions and saute until golden brown, add all other ingredients into the pot.
Bring to a boil then turn down to a simmer for 1 hour.
Once finished, pour the stock through a fine-mesh strainer (sieve or Tami). If you don’t own either of those you can use a milk bag or a fine-mesh cheesecloth. For now, reserve your stock in a container, or vacuum seal it and save it for making a broth, soup or sauce. I will show you next week what we will use the left over crabmeat & stock for. Have a great week everyone, see you around.