Dungeness crab vs blue crab cracked#

If you insist on complicating your Dungeness crab life, try it as crab cioppino, crab ciacucco (cioppino with a hot peppery attitude), crab Louis, the Palace Court Salad with crab legs, or as Shanghai-style crab soup dumplings.

Dungeness crab vs blue crab cracked#

It’s best cracked and cold with you picking the meat from the claws, legs, and bodies and dipping it in a bit of homemade mayonnaise. And it’s not necessary to mask its glory with a lot of sauce. Dungeness crab tastes slightly sea-salty and the word “funky” comes to mind. But what is it about this beauty that makes it so special? Well, for one, it does not smell like athletic socks, new or used. DUNGENESS CRABĪh, but Dungeness crab - Metacarcinus magister - incredible! The aristocrat! Simply the best crab in the world, it’s named after the port of Dungeness in the state of Washington. European edible crab is prominent in crab bisque, bouillabaisse and in crabe Mexicaine. As are some of its brethren, it is sweet and briny. This versatile crab, Cancer pagurus, also called brown crab because of its color, is found mostly in European markets and restaurants. I tried that, too, but they’re not as good as the chili crab served in the food stalls of Singapore where they use those mud crabs that have probably crawled all the way from Australia. Maybe that’s why they are also frequently served in Australia in a chili sauce. When I tried them in Sydney, steamed and served with mayonnaise, I thought they had a faint aroma of ammonia, and that put me off. The Australian mud crab, Scylla serrata, rates a mention. Lest you lose faith with your crab-centric columnist, let’s just say the flavor of the hairy crab was musky like a proper athletic sock should be. I tried them in several restaurants and each time discerned a whiff of worn athletic socks - not unpleasant, I should add. When I visited Shanghai, I found that they were messy to eat and much ado about very little. Usually steamed, most Shanghai restaurants require you to tear the beast apart with your own claws. Hairy crabs are not really hairy fuzzy would be a better adjective. They are also known as the Chinese mitten crab, in Latin, Eriocheir sinensis. So-called hairy crabs are a delicacy in Asia. Crab fisherman twist off one claw for the market and throw the crab back in the water where they promptly grow another one. They’re large - about the size of the palm of your hand - and have a nutty and salty taste. If there was no such thing as Dungeness crab, stone crab would be my favorite. Stone crab from Florida, specifically from the iconic Miami Beach restaurant Joe’s Stone Crab founded in 1913, is marvelous with a mustard-mayonnaise sauce. What do they taste like? Slightly sweet and briny. Peekytoe or “picked toe” came from their sharp pointed claw. Actually they are small Atlantic rock crab, Cancer irroratus, that were a throwaway by-product of Maine lobster fishermen until about 1997 when Rod Mitchell, proprietor of a seafood wholesaler in Portland, Maine decided to call them by their slang name. What a ridiculous name for a noble crustacean. I don’t understand the big deal about soft shell crab. The flavor of the molting, shell-and-all, crab, is nil as far as I’m concerned. The flavor of the steamed crab is somewhat nutty and “crabby,” if you will.

Devotees usually have East Coast Chesapeake Bay blue crab one of two ways - either steamed or shell-and-all, when they’re molting and sloughing off their old hard skeletons and beginning to grow new ones. Its Latin name, Callinectes sapidus, means beautiful swimmer.

King crab flounders, to use a fishy metaphor.

King crab is frequently steamed and dipped in melted butter, perhaps the only sensible way to devour this giant. Meat comes from the legs and claws and doesn’t have much flavor. But I suppose king crab, Paralithodes camtschaticus, is better than no crab at all. After that, crab was a cinch.Īs you may have surmised, crab is my thing. Perhaps he or she had already encountered an oyster, squeezed a bit of lemon juice on it and slurped. One wonders how that first gourmet decided they were edible. And we have dined on them with gusto as far back as prehistoric times.Ĭrabs are forbidding creatures, exoskeletal, all spines and claws and hard carapaces. There are literally thousands of species and subspecies of crab. I had been in training for crab season all summer doing some field work with crab from up around Oregon someplace. I put in my order at Swan Oyster Depot for a few big ones, cracked and ready to go. 15 was one of the most important dates on this year’s calendar. The other day I got to musing about crab.