What is it about the crab meat that we don't mind the hard work to get to it? It’s got to be more than its distinctive taste. The eating process itself is a hands-on, immersive experience. At the risk of being stared at, the joy of cracking, sucking and devouring the delicate flesh under the hard shell is something only a crab-lover will understand. That first bite tastes so sweet! The search for pieces of unreachable meat followed by the mess only seems to heighten their tastiness.
Art of crab eating
Crab-cracking requires a great deal of precision, and it is here where errors, and oftentimes frustration, abound.
“To get the meat out in one piece, you need to break the leg ever so slightly so that you can pull the shell apart from both sides. However, if you accidentally snap the leg in half, extracting the meat becomes nearly impossible,” says Arvind Reddy an avid crab eater and mess maker from Mumbai.
It takes some time to master the crab-cracking rhythm - crack, tug, eat, repeat until you have extracted every last, delicious morsel.
As the pile of shells grows larger, fingers get sticky, even slightly bruised from the shells and lips tingle and burn from all the spices in the crab curry. A lot of this may sound awful to anyone unfamiliar with the pleasures of a crab feast. But for those of us in the know, it just feels good, because it’s a sign that we've earned it.
Know your crabs
King crab is the granddaddy of them all. They come from Alaska and Russia, and fishing for them is known to be particularly dangerous work. They’re also one of the largest species of edible crab, with shells sometimes spanning 11 inches and a leg span of 6 feet! The meat - which tastes like lobster, with a rich, sweet flavour - is notoriously difficult to coax out of the hard, spiny shell.
Snow crabs, on the other hand, have long, skinny legs and are easy to snap and eat without any tools. When harvesting snow crabs, only the males are kept. The females are thrown back in to the water so that the fishery can sustain.
The Sri Lankan mud crab is one of the most delicious crabs in the world. They grow up to 1 ft in length and weigh 2-5kg.
Then there is the Horsehair Crab from Japan considered to be one of the most expensive crab species in the world due to their deliciousness. Even the cooking method is unique. The crabs are boiled in saltwater to preserve the delicate taste.
Stone crabs are delicious too. These fancy little black-tipped crustaceans are harvested in South Florida. Most of the meat is in the claw. Interestingly, fishermen snap off a single claw and throw the rest of the crab back into the water, where it will regenerate a new one.
Then you have the soft shell crabs. Not a kind of crab, but a culinary term for crabs that have recently molted, so their new exoskeletons have not yet hardened. Aside from the gills, mouthparts, and abdomen, the entire body is usually served deep fried or sautéed.
In Mumbai, the greyish back mud crab called ‘khadi cha kekda’ is extremely popular. The one thing these crabs have in common is the high price tag.
Choosing the best
Whether you boil, steam or curry it, the crab that you have on hand matters just as much as your technique. “The most important thing is the quality of the crab. If you don’t get that right, the dish will be a waste. Turn the crab over and feel the underbelly. It needs to be as hard as a rock,” says Dharshan Munidasa, founder, Ministry of Crab.
For the Mumbai outlet, Munidasa says he flies down live mud crabs from Chennai five times a week. Whatever you choose, avoid dead crabs, he advises: “If it's not moving, don't buy it”. Bacteria and enzymes get to work quickly after a crab dies, breaking down proteins. As a result, raw meat from a dead crab will turn mushy fast and taste off.
Before you cook, be sure to discard the lungs - the feathery cones lining the side of the body. They are just not digestible and taste terrible. The greenish stuff is the liver. You can eat it and many love this part of the crab. If you have a female crab and you see bright orange stuff inside, it's the roe or eggs and is edible.
“The trick is to cook it in its shell - that retains the juice, the flavour and the taste of the crab meat. If you crack open the crab shell and scoop out the meat and cook it, you will find it is sometimes like rubber, and very often tasteless. Cook it with the shell. This works as the same principle as meat on the bone. The meat is infinitely more tastier. And in a crab, 70 percent of the body weight is made up by the shell,” explains chef Ananda Solomon of Thai Naam.
A crabby affair
If the prospect of wrestling with an armour-plated crustacean seems daunting, just walk into a seafood restaurant and enjoy the treat.
Trishna in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda was the first restaurant to bring wriggling live crabs to the table for you to choose from and pack fish tanks with live creatures waiting to be consumed.
Equally celebrated is Mahesh Lunch Home, best known for its butter garlic crab. “We use live crabs which are first cleaned and then boiled. The sauce is made with lots of garlic and butter in a slow-cooking style. Then, we add our special secret seasoning. Once the sauce is completely ready, we add the crab and serve it with or without the shell as requested by the guest,” says Mahendra Karkera, owner of Mahesh Lunch Home.
The hype and hoopla surrounding crabs shifted to Ministry Of Crab (MOC) when it launched in Mumbai in 2019. The signature Pepper Crab is made using hand-crushed peppercorns rolled on a traditional miris gala (grinding stone), whole peppercorns, and a pepper stock. The crab comes beautifully presented: the legs protruding upwards in an inviting bouquet, and the shell conveniently pre-cracked, making getting at the sweet crab meat that much easier. Any left over sauce should be dutifully mopped up with rice. MOC even does a crab salad served inside a fresh, partially scooped-out avocado.
If you are looking for some home-style crabs, then Fresh Catch in Bandra is the place to go. The Konkani style Crab Jeera Meera here is a lip-smacking dish of whole crab simmered in a spicy, tangy curry that goes best with steamed rice or neer dosa. Another smashing crab dish here is the Crab Butter Garlic where sizzling hot butter garlic sauce is poured over de-shelled crab meat. Yummy!
Another restaurant that serves scrumptious plates of whole crabs is Bastian. The Singapore Chili Crab is what crab dreams are made of. Incidentally the restaurant is named after Sebastian, the crab in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
But for those who find eating whole crabs a hassle the crispy fried crab fritters at Café Duco are ideal. The soft shell crabs are crumb fried and served with homemade aioli and mixed greens. Delicious.
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