Crab boil system

Boil crabs for about 10-15 minutes and then let them soak for 15-20 minutes.

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Put them on ice, then take the backs off while they're stiff and clean the trash out (gills, fat) with a hose pipe.

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Put them on ice, then take the backs off while they're stiff and clean the trash out (gills, fat) with a hose pipe. Then boil them the same as crawfish. Way easier to eat and the seasoning seems to work into the meat easier.

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Your hosing out the fat, that is some of the best parts of the fricking crab

Back in college my GF at the time asked me to go to her family’s crab boil. Not being from north LA (Many, LA) and thinking I would enjoy and get to know these people, I obliged. Of course, I started to hear how oh, he is from the south do not take offense to our food. I chuckled. Then the ice chest lid came off, these skeleton looking crabs with seasoning poured all over the top were something I have never seen before. They were so cooked that the meat had shrunk. I asked where are the shells? I was told “by taking the shells off the seasoning is better absorbed”- WTF I said to myself. Needless to say that gf of mine and I broke up, it was a big sign, thank god!

This is so wrong on so many levels it is hard to comprehend.

I respectfully, and totally, disagree with your advice.

Every spring on the Saturday before Easter my wife's family would get together at her dad's house for a family reunion/crawfish boil and about 30-40 people would show up.

One year one of her cousins who had moved from central La. to Texas came to it and he insisted on boiling one of the 6 sacks of crawfish. That was the worst crap I'd ever tasted and he ruined damn near 40 lbs. of those tasty mudbugs by boiling them in water with almost no seasoning and then dumping the seasoning over the crawfish in an ice chest and shaking them about to get them all coated. The heads had no flavor and the meat was bland as can be.

That was the one and only sack he's ever boiled.

I agree. The fat in the shells is a delicacy and even if I don't eat it right away, I'll often pick crabs and save the fat for later use in seafood dishes for a much richer flavor

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Put them on ice, then take the backs off while they're stiff and clean the trash out (gills, fat) with a hose pipe. Then boil them the same as crawfish. Way easier to eat and the seasoning seems to work into the meat easier.

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Ban this man

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Don’t get me wrong, I love the meat, but the fat is sooo much better.

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Damn right. I'd buy a jar of the yellow fat from the points of the shells and spread it on crackers. alternate in some pate and goat cheese with red wine and it's a meal.

I boil crabs for 6 minutes are so. When I get them big fat females off Grand Isle beach I double the seasoning I use for crawfish, they so fat they barely absorb any seasoning.

Don't put hot crabs in hot water. Make sure they are cold or they will drop there legs and claws.