Potted Crab

The bf and I stumbled across East Street Market just off the Walworth Road yesterday. It’s great – a cross between the set of Eastenders and a Jamaican food market, and unbelievably cheap. After we had finished hyperventilating with excitement about buying six avocados for a pound we recklessly decided to buy some crabs – three of the little blighters for a fiver, still foaming at the mouth and clicking dismally. Once home we were relieved to discover that two of them had expired in my backpack. But one was still very much alive.

We googled methods of killing crabs humanely and found suggestions that included disembowelment, screwdriver through the brains, a stint in the freezer and a gentle stroke to the top of the head. We were feeling a bit pathetic by this point so we went for the freezer/caressing method and when it still seemed to be wide awake and looking at us with its wandering, googly eyes we decided to be brave and just plunge it into a vat of boiling water.

They weighed 500g each and so we boiled them for 12 minutes and then put them in cold water to stop them cooking further. To extract the meat we followed this method:

Twist off the claws

Grab all the legs on each side and twist them off too

Turn the crab upside down and push the bum of the crab so that it levers off without too much difficulty

Remove the body of the crab

Scrape the remaining innards out of the main shell, avoiding the browny green stuff. The bright orange eggs of the female are fine to eat.

Then cut the body in two and pick out all the little bits of meat.

Crack the claws and legs with the butt of a knife and pull out the meat.

I’m going to be completely honest and say it was a lengthy, fiddly process and three crabs only ended up producing about 330g of meat. But that’s enough for a bit of potting.

This is the recipe we went with, based on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s suggestions. 

330g crab

1 lemon

220g butter

1 bay leaf

½ tsp mace

½ tsp paprika

1 ½ tbsp chopped dill

1)      Put the meat in a bowl and add the juice of a lemon and some salt and pepper

2)      Melt the butter with the bay leaf and clarify by skimming off the white scum and then running it through a tea-towel-lined sieve.

3)      Sprinkle the spices into the melted butter and pour 80% of it onto the crab.

4)      Add the dill and stir it up.

5)      Pot into sterilised pots and top with the melted butter. Refrigerate.

This made 2 full ramekins and half a jar- enough for a starter for about 6 people.