The most important thing about cooking blue crab to note is that you cannot cook crabs that are dead; as soon as they die they start to rot and become toxic. If you are cooking fresh crabs, they must be alive.
A favored method of preparing fresh crabs is to simply boil them alive. A longstanding related question: Do they feel pain? Yes, researchers now say. Not only do crabs suffer pain, a new study found, but they retain a memory of it (assuming they aren't already dead on your dinner plate).
Start by bringing water to a boil, and add salt and any other seasoning you'd like. Then, add the crab to the water quickly bringing the water back up to a boil, and cook until the crab floats for 10 to 15 minutes. Then, remove the crab from the water and let them cool before serving. Cooking live crab is recommended.
Crustaceans such as crabs and lobsters are the only animals that we regularly cook alive. They're usually prepared for eating by putting them straight into boiling water. Experts say that way you can guarantee they're fresh and less likely to make you ill.
Crabs take four to five minutes to die in boiling water, while lobsters take three minutes.
The most important thing about cooking blue crab to note is that you cannot cook crabs that are dead; as soon as they die they start to rot and become toxic. If you are cooking fresh crabs, they must be alive.
Live crabs can be kept on ice for up to 24-48 hours at most, but cooking them within 8 hours is recommended. It is important to cook them immediately if they die. Mud crabs, Dungeness and Snow Crabs can be kept up to 48 hours if conditions are ideal. Blue crabs can be kept alive for up to 24 hours.
It minimizes the risk of food poisoning
So, to minimize the risk of food poisoning, crustaceans are often cooked alive.
If you cook a dead crab, the meat will most likely be tough and lacking in flavor. Additionally, the dead crab may contain bacteria and other contaminants that can cause food poisoning, so it is strongly recommended that you discard any crab meat that has been cooked from a dead crab.
Boiling ensures the seasoning gets evenly distributed throughout the crab and keeps it moist. If you steam the crabs all the seasoning ends up on the outside shell and eventually on your fingers.
Lobsters and other shellfish have harmful bacteria naturally present in their flesh. Once the lobster is dead, these bacteria can rapidly multiply and release toxins that may not be destroyed by cooking. You therefore minimise the chance of food poisoning by cooking the lobster alive.
Boiling lobsters alive is a way to reduce the risk of food poisoning from bacteria that live in their flesh and that quickly multiply on their carcasses, according to Science Focus. Plus they have been deemed tastier and better presented on the plate when cooked this way.
Some say the hiss that sounds when crustaceans hit the boiling water is a scream (it's not, they don't have vocal cords). But lobsters and crabs may want to since a new report suggests that they could feel pain.
Submerge your crab in the boiling water and allow to come back to the boil before allowing a further 20 minutes for a large crab such as the one shown. Killing the crab prior to cooking is humane and instantaneous, but it also avoids the crab from shedding limbs through shock, which often happens when boiling alive.
In Elwood and Adam's 2015 paper, they found that a painful situation triggers a stress response in crabs. They reported that this, combined with other findings, such as decapods changing their behaviour long-term after a painful incident, demonstrates that decapods are capable of experiencing pain (2).
Remove the spongy stomach and gills underwater, pulling away from the crab. Rinse it well, then crack the body in half. After this, continue rinsing the crab until it is clean, then crack the legs away or leave the crab in halves.
Just like fish, blue crabs breathe using gills. However, unlike fish, blue crabs can survive out of water for long periods of time-even over 24 hours-as long as their gills are kept moist.
Whether it is believed the lobsters experience pain or not, killing the lobster just before cooking is the preferred method. Perhaps this is for the benefit of the cook as a way to minimize trauma since most people are disconnected from the killing of animals they eat.
The practice of eating live seafood, such as fish, crab, oysters, baby shrimp, or baby octopus, is widespread. Oysters are typically eaten live.
Cooking the food thoroughly is the only way to prevent diseases caused by these pathogens. Depending on the types of pathogens, consumers may get different diseases and have different symptoms after eating contaminated marinated raw crabs.
Those who enjoy cooking and eating crab should simply take precautions not to eat the viscera, located under the crab's back, and avoid using whole crabs in soups and other dishes.
Thus, crabs pass the bar scientists set for showing that an animal feels pain.
When a crab dies bacteria will quickly destroy the meat so it is important to either cook the crab while it is still alive or immediately after it has died. A crab that has limp claws or whose antennae isn't twitching when you pick it up is close to death and should be cooked immediately.