How to Eat Crabs

Whether you are dealing with hard or soft-shelled crabs, the meat can be delicious but hard to handle. Learn how to get to the tasty crab meat without making a mess.

Step 1: Boil or steam hard-shelled crabs
Boil or steam hard-shelled crabs. Cook until the crab's shell turns pink.

Step 2: Remove the front and back legs
Remove the front and back legs by snapping them away from the crab's body with your hands.

Tip
Place a layer of newspaper or Kraft paper over your table before opening the crabs to catch bits of shell and juice.

Step 3: Remove the apron on the underside
Use your fingers to open the heart-shaped apron on the underside of a hard or soft-shelled crab's body. Pull the sides of the apron back and snap it off.

Tip
Ask your seafood dealer to clean soft-shelled crabs for you. They will remove the head, the apron, and the inedible meats.

Step 4: Twist the top shell off and remove inedible parts
Twist the top shell off of the hard-shelled crab using a knife or your hands. Use a knife to clean out the yellowish parts inside the hard or soft-shelled crab that are inedible.

Step 5: Break the crab in half to expose meat
Hold the hard-shelled crab with both hands and break the body in half down the center to expose a lump of crab meat.

Step 6: Crack open the legs and remove meat]
Use a small wooden mallet to crack open each of the legs. Remove the meat with your fingers or a cocktail fork.

Tip
You will get only a small amount of meat from each hard-shelled crab. The weight of the edible meat is only about 15 percent of the weight of the crab in its shell.

Step 7: Cook meat
Cook the meat. Bread and fry the whole soft-shelled crab, or use boiled meat from a hard-shelled crab in a salad or crab cake.

Did You Know?
The record for the world's largest crab cake was set in 2008 by a Baltimore company. It weighed 235 pounds and took nine hours to cook.

[powerpuffever]

I love how many videos Howcast has on how to eat

[funyuns]

The yellow part "mustard" is not roe and is in both M and F crabs.The yellow is actually the hepatopancreas(liver and pancreas).Roe on the other hand in Maryland blue crabs generally is orange in color and only found in female crab. and yes both the mustard and roe are very good!

[ghostmosquito]

@powerofsonic it's the roe of the the crab. I am not sure what you mean by the "yellowish green", it's bright yellow inside female crabs

[adrienbh]

Indelible yellow stuff? That stuff is damn good

[marcox]

1:01 Jesus that’s the eggs, ONE OF THE BEST PARTS OF THE CRAB

[jayess]

You really dont need to do all that. When he said mallet i lmao

[UDubFootballFan]

Why isn't step 1, put the paper on the table. They clearly show paper during step 1 and 2 and it isn't till 3 that they suggest putting paper down.

[jason]

Yea the orange stuff is edible and the brains stuff is edible and you can eat the crab legs there meat in there you need to push it out

[ilovespencersmith]

that awkward moment when the two top comments tell you the same thing but call it something different

[Hayles]

That record crab is as heavy as Randy Orton!

[Lalamauchi]

@pjvinluan What's the orange stuff? I have been eating crabs since I was little and never knew what the orange stuff I always ate were.

[brookstringer]

you forget how vicious it looks when eating crab, snapping legs and cutting shit in half then devouring the insides.

[rylancedg]

can the crabs cary any desizes or bacteria if so is there a way to get rid of it?

[dontworryimnotafraid]

My mom said that the yellow part helps you stop peeing on your bed

[CasualPanels]

To eat a crab is a bit hard if you don't know how...
But you forgot something

You will need:
A crab XD

[dragoonerzerg]

@DreamsInVanilla You don't eat seafood?

[ghostmosquito]

uh the yellow part you scraped off the crab is the roe.. and one of the best parts. they only come in female crabs. the shape of male and female crab aprons are different

[jakewarning]

0:09 "The meat can be delicious, but hard to handle" LOL!

[ChinaLake]

@ghostmosquito Are the aprons on a female crab bigger?

[kylie]

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