North America · Volume 37, The Market, the Truck and the Tide
The Dungeness crab feed
Pacific Northwest and California coasts, United States
Illustration
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 92 sources in the brief
As tradition built it
The Dungeness crab feed
Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission's own published method. About 30 minutes total.
Ingredients
- 1 live Dungeness crab per serving (or 1 to 2 crab sections, or a quarter pound of picked meat)
- ¼ cup per gallon of water salt, for the boiling water
- enough to fully submerge the crab cold water, for the ice bath
- to serve melted butter
- to serve lemon juice
- to serve hot, crusty sourdough bread
Method
- Drop the live crab into heavily salted, rolling boiling water and cook 18 to 20 minutes after the water returns to a full boil, until the shell turns bright orange.
- Plunge into cold water to halt the cooking before cleaning.
- To clean: hold the base of the shell, place a thumb under it at the mid-point and pull the shell free, then scrape away the feathery gills and rinse the viscera, known locally as crab butter, away under a strong stream of cold water.
- Serve cracked by hand with melted butter, lemon juice and hot, crusty sourdough for mopping.
Notes
An average two-pound crab yields about half a pound of picked meat, roughly a 25 percent meat-to-shell ratio.
This chapter could not pull exact butter and lemon quantities for the household version and will not invent a precision the source does not carry.
The large-scale, ticketed crab feed proper is a separate Portuguese-Azorean institution run by social clubs since the 1960s to fund the Holy Ghost Festival, serving all-you-can-eat cold marinated crab alongside wine, garlic bread, green salad and clam linguine, unofficial season January to March.
What a modern chef changes
A precisely monitored boil and a clarified butter dip
Rung 2: Boiling and shocking a Dungeness crab
Ingredients
- lemon zest, for dehydrating and grinding
Method
- Hold the boiling water at a precisely monitored, sustained rolling boil with a probe thermometer, since the Commission's 18 to 20 minute window assumes a genuine, unbroken return to the boil.
- Build a proper melted butter dip in a small saucepan over the gentlest possible heat, skimming the milk solids as they rise so the finished butter is clarified rather than merely melted.
- Finish with lemon juice added off the heat so its acidity stays bright rather than cooking flat.
- Dehydrate a portion of lemon zest ahead of time and grind it in a spice grinder into a fine seasoning dust for the table.