Boiled Crabs
Ingredients
Directions
Steam the crabs
Put the crabs in a large kettle with about one quart hot salted water to a kettle full of crabs and let them steam twenty minutes.
Put a cover over the kettle and on it a weight, so that the steam may not escape.
Take them out, wipe them clean, and if the backs can be easily removed, they are done; if not, steam them longer.
Clean and serve
Take off the small claws, the backs, and all between the backs and the inner shell, and throw them away.
The large claws may be cracked and sent to the table with the rest of the crab when picked.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.
Explore the science
The step that matters
Testing doneness by the backs. Crabs that are not steamed long enough keep their backs firmly attached, so the test of easily removed backs shows whether the meat has cooked through and loosened from the shell.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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