How to Cook and Clean a Fresh Dungeness Crab

Step 10 Serve

Half-crabs look nice for serving, and are a decent single-person serving if you've got some side dishes. If you've got a ton of crabs from your traps, though, why bother eating anything else?

Serve with a lemon wedge, and keep a cracker (or large knife, or slab of wood and a smashing rock) available for claw access.

Pull all of the nice large chunks of meat out of the body, then break open the legs and claws. You can pick the meat out with a tool, or forgo decorum and simply slurp it out directly. There's really no way to eat crabs delicately, so don't bother trying.

From the comments:
Use kitchen shears to slice through the sides of the legs.  You'll get easy access to the leg meat with less effort and mess.

Comments

[calba]

When I eat crab or lobster, to get to the bones I use a compact letter opener—the ones with the razors.

[funkisockmunki]

Great tutorial with beautiful pictures. I came here hoping to get up the courage to hunt and kill one for food while scuba diving, but have just lost my appetite. (no fault of yours, just wow, yuck!). I'll have to forward it to my friend to see if he is up for vivisection or ripping creature parts off and rinsing goo out of them. Thanks canida!

[Artanis_Regnis]

One thing I found very helpful when eating crab is using a pair of kitchen shears to simply cut down one side of a leg. Meat comes out rather easy that way.

[canida]

Helpful hint, thanks! I'll add it to the Instructable.