To eat a crab fresh from the sea, cooked simply and garnished with nothing more than butter and lemon, is one of life’s true gifts. Dungeness crabs, recommended by Ocean Wise, are a sustainable food source, fished in a way that minimizes damage to the environment. They are one of the great treasures of our bountiful coast, needing very little to make them delicious. Cooking one sometimes seems daunting to the uninitiated, but its appearance at the feast immediately imparts a sense of camaraderie among the guests as they lose their inhibitions, forget their manners, and tuck in. In that spirit, and in gratitude, we give you the simplest of meals: the crab boil.
Ingredients
- Dungeness crabs (allow 1 or 2 per two people)
- corn cobs, each cut in 3 pieces (allow 1 or 2 per person)
- small new potatoes (5 or 6 per person)
- lemon wedges
- melted butter for dipping
Instructions
Make sure the water has lots of salt. If you’ve only ever used a teaspoon to measure salt, now’s the time to get out your measuring cup. For a 20-quart (18-litre) stock pot, you need around 1 to 1½ cups of salt. It should taste like the sea. This looks like an alarming quantity of salt but most of it will be discarded with the water after your boil.
Timing: Allow crab to cook in boiling water for about 7–8 minutes per pound. Corn and potatoes will need about 10 minutes total. Make sure you know how much your crab weighs so you can figure out how long to cook it.
After adding each ingredient, start timing once water has returned to the boil.
Chill the crab in a bath of ice water to stop the cooking process.
Cover a table with paper or cloth and lay the cooked crab and all other ingredients in a pile. No knives or forks required.
How to Deal with a Freshly Caught Crab:
Most recipes suggest simply dropping the live crab in boiling water, but it’s considered more humane to desensitize it prior to cooking. If you will be serving the crab whole, chill it in the freezer for at least 15 minutes. Then, to kill it, disable the main nerve centre with a sharp object prior to boiling. We found Becky Selengut’s excellent YouTube video to be helpful.
Alternatively, you could half-back the crab as soon as it’s out of the trap. Using a sharp metal edge, cleave the crab in half. Toss the guts and gills back into the sea for other marine life to feast on.
Important note: A valid BC Tidal Waters Sport Fishing Licence is required if you want to catch your own crabs. Respect the size and daily harvest limitations for your area. Keep only males. Undersized crabs must be released immediately. To educate yourself about regulations and safe consumption, refer to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
