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| She-crab Soup is a regional delicacy. |
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Fishing for the blues
By Becky Billingsley
Originally published in Coastal Carolina Dining magazine, Summer 2005
If Forrest Gump’s friend, Bubba, had been into crabs instead of shrimp, he might have had a different list of favorites, like crab sauté, crab imperial, crab cocktail, crab chowder, flounder-stuffed crab, filet mignon topped with crab, crab salad, crab cakes, deviled crab, whole steamed crab, crab dip, fried soft shell crab, crab balls, crab quiche and crab casserole.
Then there’s our essential regional recipe, she-crab soup, which is rich with cream, flavored with sherry and mace and colored orange from crab roe.
Happily for those who can’t get enough of the sweet meat, Grand Strand restaurants specialize in the blue crab, and chefs know how to treat it with respect.
George DuRant, a marketing specialist and amateur crab meat aficionado, speaks for crab lovers everywhere when he says, “With some things it’s best not to be too complex. Crab has such an extreme taste, it’s best just left alone.”
Or mostly left alone. Blue crab fans certainly don’t want the meat smothered in sauce or cheese, buried in pastry or lost among too many other ingredients. A little seasoning is fine, perhaps some butter, a few finely diced vegetables, a small dollop of sauce.
But nearly naked is just fine. If you don’t believe it, listen to diners reactions when a plate of sautéed jumbo lump crab is carried through a restaurant. The collective sigh of “ohhhhhhh” that ripples through the building makes people crane to see if Mick Jagger walked in the door.
While there’s much wonderful seafood in the world, crab is a dining diva – hard to obtain (at least if you catch them yourself), on the expensive side (if you don’t catch them yourself) and must be handled with gentle care. When crab is cooked right, the world is a happier place with dishes such as Rivertown Bistro’s Crab Crusted Grouper, Thoroughbred’s She-Crab Soup, Sara J’s Sautéed Soft Shell Crab, Phillips Seafood’s Crab Cakes or Jumbo Lump Sauté and Pawleys Island Tavern’s Crab Cakes.
And there’s more, delightfully much more. Chefs are crab experts around these parts, so wherever you end up for dinner, ask your server about the restaurant’s best crab dish. You might get crab pot pie, crab Mornay, crab Newberg, crab etouffee, crab puffs, crab dumplings, crab melt, crab Louis, crab spread or crab-stuffed mushrooms.
And it’s all good.
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To catch a crab
Crabbing is an excellent pastime. You don’t need much in the way of gear, it’s so easy a child can do it and, if you catch a bucketful, you don’t have to worry about how you’re going to spend your evening because it’ll take a while to pick the meat out of them.
If you’re inspired to grab a kid or three and head out right this minute to go crabbing, you can. Just pause to also snag some string, a bony piece of raw chicken and long-handled fishing net.
If you’re using those tools, you don’t need a license in either South or North Carolina. Just don’t keep any baby crabs, and don’t keep female crabs with egg sacs. Some people, like Gennaro Galzerano, don’t keep any females at all.
“They reproduce,” he says. “I never take the females.”
Galzerano, an area chef, goes crabbing almost every day in the season, the peak of which is June through August. If it’s a nice day, he heads out about 10 a.m. to his favorite spot which is “somewhere around Garden City.” He cuts about a 10-foot length of cotton butcher’s string and ties a raw chicken neck, wing or leg to one end. The chef swings the meat in a circle a few times, then casts it several feet out in the water before securing the other end of the string to a big rock or some other sturdy object.
Once Galzerano has cast three or four lines, he goes back to the first one and slowly, gently, draws it in. Hopefully there will be one or more crabs attached to the chicken. When the crabs are near enough to net, he scoops up the prize.
For more than 25 years, this has been a pleasant way for the native of Salerno, Italy, to spend a few hours on warm summer mornings. He takes his catch to work and transforms the crustaceans to fresh and succulent meals.
Although you don’t need a license if you use a string and raw chicken to catch blue crabs, there are a few details to keep in mind.
- It’s against South Carolina Department of Natural Resources regulation to keep blue crabs that are less than five inches across, measuring from the widest points of the crab’s shell, or carapace.
- You can’t keep female crabs with sponges, or egg sacs, and some crabbers won’t keep any females, so as to ensure plenty of crabs for future meals. It’s easy to tell males from females – the females have “painted fingernails,” or red-tipped claws. If the female is mature and reproducing, her abdomen is dark colored and is the shape of an inverted U, and looks a little like the U.S. Capitol building
- Don’t put the crabs you’re going to keep in water because they’ll suffocate. Instead, keep them on ice and try to cook them the same day they’re caught.
- Watch out for pincers! Usually you can just dump the crabs from the net into your cooler. If you need to handle one, use gloves or be extremely careful. If a crab does latch onto your finger, try letting it dangle a few seconds – it’ll usually drop off.
- You’ll find blue crabs in brackish water – where there is a mixture of salt and fresh. A great crabbing spot is at Huntington Beach State Park south of Murrells Inlet, on the long dock that stretches into the marsh.
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Steamed and cracked
So now that you have a cooler full of blue crabs, what are you doing to do with them? Stack the live crabs in a big pot (if any have died, discard them), add a few inches of water and turn on the heat. After about 20 to 30 minutes, they’re done. You can add seasoning to the water, like crab boil seasoning available at the grocery store.
Eating the crabs takes a little practice, but it’s fun to spread newspapers on a picnic table and have at it.
Debbie Griffin of Flo’s Place in Murrells Inlet is an expert at getting the meat out of steamed crabs.
“When I was a little girl, my dad took me to eat crabs in Maryland. Dad opened their backs for me, and I ate a dozen. He said, ‘That’s it, you’re opening your own crabs from now on.’ After that, I ate only six, because I had to do all the work.”
Debbie’s dad and the founder of Flo’s Place, Ralph Triska, passed away this spring, but Debbie retains many fond memories and much useful knowledge from her father, such as cracking a crab as fast as her fingers can move. Here’s how she does it:
- Turn the crab upside down and using a knife, pry open the crab’s apron and pull it off.
- Insert your thumb so you can remove the top shell.
- Using your fingers, clean out the gills and other “messy gunk.” If you want, you can use a little water to rinse off any remaining gunk.
- Using a sharp paring knife or your hands, cut or pull off the legs.
- Now you have the big middle piece left, which you slit down the middle and lay open flat, as if you were butterflying a pork chop. You’ll end up with three large pieces, and you can lift out the meat.
- Crack the legs open – you can use a nut cracker if you don’t have a crab cracker or a wooden mallet – and get that meat out.
- Use the meat in your favorite crab recipe, or simply dip in melted butter and savor.
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Chilled Avocado Soup with crabmeat, tomato and cilantro
The Rice Paddy, Georgetown
Ingredients: (Soup, serves 8-10)
4 ripe avocados
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped
1 cup sour cream
4 cups chicken stock
Salt, to taste
Dash of Tabasco
3 Roma tomatoes, diced
1 pound lump crabmeat
Chopped fresh cilantro
Preparation:
Peel and roughly chop avocados; toss with lemon juice. Add chopped cucumber and sour cream. Using blend or food processor, puree mixture, adding stock to each batch. Season with salt and Tabasco. Chill thoroughly. Top with crabmeat, tomato and cilantro.
Phillips Seafood Crab Cakes
Ingredients: (Entrée, makes 6 cakes)
1/2 pound Phillips backfin crab meat
1 pound Phillips jumbo lump crab meat
1/4 cup chopped parsley
3/4 cup Ritz crackers, crushed
1 large egg
3/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
3/4 teaspoon lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon seafood seasoning
3/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 cup mayonnaise
Preparation:
Combine the egg, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, seafood seasoning, Dijon mustard and mayonnaise in a bowl. Place the crab meat, parsley and Ritz crackers into a separate bowl. Mix very lightly to combine. Add the wet ingredients to the crab mixture and combine lightly. Portion into 5-ounce cakes and broil, bake or pan fry until browned on both sides.
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