Red tide... Clean your crab first before cooking...

Was getting ready to drop a pot tonight and someone told me a ranger warned him that the red tide was pretty bad out here on the strait and to be careful even with the crab. One precaution to take is to not cook the crab whole but split it and wash out the guts well before cooking as that is what can hold the toxin. From what i have read the meat is fine even with red tide. If anyone knows differently feel free to post.

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20100613/news/306139989/potentially-lethal-levels-of-red-tide-hits-clallam-county-may-be

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20100714/NEWS/307149991/red-tide-prompts-admiralty-inlet-area-restrictions-on-recreational

doug in sequim

I'm not a biologist, but in the fishing regulation, it does in fact say to clean the crabs before cooking as the meat is less likely to hold contaminents than the other stuff.

Page 128 of WA reg:

• Water color does not indicate SHELLFISH safety.
• Rinse your catch in salt (not fresh) water before leaving the beach, quickly cool your catch on ice or in a refrigerator, and cook as soon as possible.
• Wash all SEAWEED before eating.
• Cook shellfi sh thoroughly before eating.
• Cooking, rinsing, or freezing DOES NOT destroy all pollutants. CRAB can also concentrate pollutants in their internal organs (crab butter). Clean CRAB before cooking. Eat only the meat.

 I always clean my crab before cooking it. I never acquired the taste for critters cooked with the guts still inside. 

Ditto----just hold the legs in each hand, fold the claws under, and whack the "nose"  against some protruding sturdy edge, it tears off the top shell and kills them instantly, merciful compared to tossing them live in boiling water, or slowly suffocating.  Then hose out the goop, and you get a really nice tasting crab.  But my Filipino friend's wife gets mad when I do that, she loves the green goop--calls it crab butter!!

Mmmmm .... crab butter!!! 

-Allen

Green goop, crab butter = crab blood, hemolymph, and green because unlike us whose red blood carries oxygen with iron, green crab blood uses copper to carry oxygen.

As strange as it sounds I like to use a good size pair of Vice Grips. Using the backside of the jaws I come down behind their eyes about 3/4" and go strait through the bottom for a clean kill. Then I flip them around and use the spring release lever of the VG to loosen the back. I've found that cleaning crab before cooking makes the body meat taste more consistent with the primo leg meat.

PSP would suck, anybody know of anyone that was ever treated for it?



(from WA DOH)

What are the symptoms of PSP?
Early symptoms include tingling of the lips and tongue, which may begin within minutes of eating poisonous shellfish or may take an hour or two to develop. Depending upon the amount of toxin a person has ingested, symptoms may progress to tingling of fingers and toes and then loss of control of arms and legs, followed by difficulty in breathing. Some people have experienced a sense of floating or nausea. If a person consumes enough poison, muscles of the chest and abdomen become paralyzed. Death can result in as little as two hours, as muscles used for breathing become paralyzed.  

Caused by little dinoflagellate  called Gonyaulax catenella----I wrote my master's thesis on toxic algae, back in 1979 at Univ Michigan.  Not too much red tide in Michigan!

As strange as it sounds I like to use a good size pair of Vice Grips. Using the backside of the jaws I come down behind their eyes about 3/4" and go strait through the bottom for a clean kill. Then I flip them around and use the spring release lever of the VG to loosen the back. I've found that cleaning crab before cooking makes the body meat taste more consistent with the primo leg meat.

I've eaten a lot of crab, yet never cleaned it before cooking.  It never occurred to me, yet I bleed/clean fish before cooking.  So the above description is to whack the top of the shell behind the eyes with the VG and continue through the hole and out the bottom?  How about a knife through the same location?

I have been precleaning my crab catch for about 8-10 years now.  Primarily it was for transporting them home 1.5 hours.  With live crab, the crab should be alive at least up until you boil/steam it, otherwise a dead crab starts to deteriorate quickly.

With the crab half'ed and cleaned, I just need to put them on ice and covered with a wet towel in a cooler for the ride home.  I have time to clean the boat and gear, before I start the cooking.  And another thing, you have a couple of days before you really need to cook these precleaned crab as long as you keep them in the fridge or cold cooler.

As for cooking, I prefer the hotter method of steaming.  Only need about 2" of water in a crab boiler.  I have a false bottom with a ton of holes in it in my pot that keeps the crab out of the water below, but buried in hot steam of beer and water.  I season the crab before dropping it into the pot, and it comes out tasty tasty!!! 

As for precleaning, no tools necessary.

This Alaskian video shows exactly how I do it, quick and clean in seconds.



 

 That vid shows the way that I clean crab. I used to flip them on their backs and give them a whack with a hatchet to split them down the middle, but once I saw the pop the back off trick I've used it ever since. Those AK crab are HUGE! I go up every year and fish with my ex bro-in-law and we always spend a day crabbing and digging razor clams. I have a burner and a huge old blue canning pot that has a spigot on the bottom so I can drain it. It has a perforated tray that I put the cleaned crab (or clams/mussels) on. Steaming instead of boiling really locks in the flavor. Cooking outside saves the inside of the house from smelling like low tide.

I eat a lot of crab and clams mice elf.
 Before I go out for them, I call the Shellfish Advisory at this number 1-800-448-2474.
 Not sure if they advise for Washington or not.
 Stay Safe!
 

I got turned on to the whack 'em, shake 'em, and stack 'em method in the mid-80's when I moved to Westport. Results in a cleaner cooking process. I always cook 'em outside, too, so i don't stink up the house. I haven't tried steaming 'em yet.
I think the reason you see whole cooked crab in the market is because the "natural packaging" sells a few. The consumer still wants to buy a whole cooked crab in the shell.
I don't even have any pots or rings, now. I loaned the one I had to a teenager (yeah, I know, that's irresponsible!)  and it got "lost."  I just blew an opportunity to pick up some Willapa Marine crab rings (made in WA) for $21.95. That's $8 off the normal price.
I should be running some pots in the Harbor here. I have a wide 16' johnboat I picked up from an ancient local who used to crab and pick oysters from it. He gave me his pot-puller (short boom arm with a pulley on the end) when I bought the boat, so I might as well put it to use. He told me of a good place in the Harbor to drop a few pots, too.