07.06.06

I Got Crabs for the Fourth

Posted in 2. Greatest Hits, 3. Recipes, 7. Other Fun at 4:54 pm by Chef Matt

I wanted to do something different for the Fourth of July this year.  Well not too different, I still wanted to throw a giant BBQ as I always do, complete with my famous salt and pepper chicken and Asian cabbage salad.  And lots and lots of cheap beer.  Those things are a given.  But since I can never leave well enough alone when it comes time to cook, I had to try something I have never done before.  I wanted to have a crab boil as well. 

My friend Fernando was really excited about this idea (he was also very excited about the rib tree I mentioned in a previous blog) and he even looked up places to get crawfish and so forth online. Well I was totally excited about this too, and Fernando even got to the point where he was challenging me in who would eat more crabs.  I told him that he would surely win for this very simple reason:

I don’t like crabs.

The look he had on his face was that of someone you have just told that their parents just died, and you were the one who did it. I had to follow up and explain that the reason I was doing this was for the fun of doing something culinarily different - not because I necessarily was going to eat it. (yeah, I said “eat it”.)

So the crab boil was simply to fill my turkey fryer (you all have one, right?) with water, some beer, hot sauce, some crab boil packets (I had a recipe, but Fernando bought some, so I used those since I am lazy) and lemons. Oh and a little vinegar as the amassed people all offer advice of what else to throw in…

So first I boiled a ton of corn and potatoes in there since they are yummy, and I have friends who are vegetarians.  Then I threw in sausage, shrimp (which I love) and crabs. Mind you I was running a grill with chicken at the same time, so this was hectic, but a ton of fun. A little while later (I lost track of time) we had a half bushel of these bad boys ready to go:

 

Yum.  Well, at least for those who like crabs… They were a hit, but the real stars turned out to be the potatoes and the sausages. Next time I will have many more of those ready to go!

So here’s my beef with crabs, besides the fact that the meat you get out of them has a weird flavor to me.  Here is me learning how to eat crabs:

Knowledgeable Crab-Eating Friend (KCEF): OK, first you take off the swimmers and legs.
Me: OK
KCEF: Right, now suck on the legs to get the meat out.
Me: *Suck!* Umm…There’s nothing in there.
KCEF: Yeah, I know… So next you want to take off the claws, and crack them open and eat the meat in there.
Me: *POW!*
KCEF: OK, maybe you don’t want to drive the cracker into the actual crab meat… they’re not all that tough…
Me: *eating mutilated crab claw meat with bits of shell in it* MMmmm…. this is good. (lying)
KCEF: Next you want to open the shell…
Me: *Raises hammer above head with shell below me*
KCEF: NO!  You want to flip it over and… (20 minute description of how to open crab shell by bottom)
Me: Wow, that was a lot of work there, but we are finally inside the main shell of the crab.
KCEF: Why are you summarizing the plot so far?
Me: For the readers at home.
KCEF: What?
Me: Nothing, now what?
KCEF: OK, see all that stuff there under the shell?
Me: (excited we were finally getting somewhere) Yeah, there’s a lot of meat in these guys!
KCEF: No, those are the lungs (gills?), you gotta scoop them out of there.
Me: *Looking at him like he just told me my parents were dead and he was the one who did it*
KCEF: OK, so now you see those little infinitesimal specks of nothing back there that we have worked for 15 minutes to get at?*
Me: You mean that little thing there?…
KCEF: No, that’s the intestine, throw that out too…
Me: …Ummm…then no.
KCEF: Yeah, me neither… anyway, if you find it, that is the backfin, it’s the good stuff.
Me: So all this work results in about 2-3 mouthfuls of food?
KCEF: Yeah, that’s about right.

*I may be editorializing the actual comment here…

So yeah, I can think of few other foods that so perfectly describe the description “not worth the effort” as crabs. But hey, we then had lots of beer, a Dance Dance Revolution competition (which I won) and then some upside-down margaritas. The rest of the night gets fuzzy after that…

Matt

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