The Best Tasting Crabs for your Gastronomic Delight

European Brown Crab- Photo Credit: Cuisineryfoodmarket.com

I was reading an advertisement in FaceBook about European Brown Crabs. I am thinking of buying/ordering on line since the price is reasonable. However, I am not sure of the taste/quality (contamination) of these crabs, so I posted a question on my FB page. However, I did not get any response except for my American-Italian neighbor. Here's the ad from FB.

European Brown Crab Cooked

These female crabs are cooked and ready to be cracked and eaten. One large crab will feed up to 2 person. You can also use the crab meat for your recipes. The white claw meat that comes from these crabs rivals the one from king crab.

Brown crab is a crab species found in the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean with a brown smooth, oval carapace, wider than it is long, which makes it stand out perfectly. Like the rest of other similar species, females have a larger abdomen than males.

• Fully cooked, free of preservatives or additives.
• 1 whole crab per pack.
• The crab weighs 14 to 21 oz (400g/600g), which is a perfectly generous portion for one to two people.

Full Description

$13.89 Special Price $11.09

I have not tasted this specie of Crabs, so I posted in FB asking if anyone knows its taste compared to the top best tasting crabs listed below.  

Top 5 Best Crabs To Eat

Maryland Blue Crab. .

Soft-Shell Crab. ...

Dungeness Crab. ...

Snow Crab. ...

Florida Stone Crab. ...

 

My Italian-American neighbor is familiar with these brown crabs. She said its taste is inferior to the Dungeness or Maryland Blue Crabs.  For those of you who are not crab enthusiasts here are the photos of the popular types of crabs used for cooking. There are more than 4500 species of crabs, but they are not all edible.

I have enjoyed the delicious taste of the Blue, Dungeness and Soft Shell Crabs as well as the Alaskan King Crab, but not the Snow or Florida Stone crabs. How about you? How many types of Crab meat have you enjoyed? They are not cheap!! 

Here's an article last year, on the high concentration of Cadmium in the brown meat ( body meat) of the European Brown Crabs. 

 

https://www.elgalabwater.com/blog/it-safe-eat-brown-crab

 

Here's another article on Eating Brown Crabs!!

Everything But the Shell: A Guide to Eating Brown Crab

Posted on April 26, 2016 by wizard Klaw

After a bit of a howler of a winter, it looks like the weather’s turned around and is becoming a bit friendlier. The lads on the crab boats will be out at Lambay Island (a spit of land in Dublin Bay where the crab like to party) pulling up pots of beautiful Brown Crabs. They know how to find them and catch them, we know how to cook them, so all that’s left is for you to know is how to eat them. It can be a bit intimidating to take on a whole crab and get the best out of it but once you know how it’s a great feed and a lot of fun.

Of the whole weight of these heavily armoured critters, about a third of it is edible meat. With sweet white meat in the claws and lower body and rich brown meat in the head, there’s a great range of flavours in a Brown Crab. When we prepare a crab in Klaw, we pull off the claws and separate the top shell and the lower body. On the lower body are the “dead man’s fingers” as they’re known. These are the crab’s gills through which water is filtered. These are removed; despite the enticing name they’re neither tasty nor visually appealing. We then split the body down the middle to make the meat more accessible and we crack the claws. This leaves the top shell or carapace. We remove the sandbox and a membrane that covers the meat. The meat in the top shell is often overlooked in favour of the sweet claw meat but for many this meat is the highlight of eating a crab. The soft meat has a distinct flavour and is stunning when spread on toast and sprinkled with a bit of the Old Bay seasoning and the yuzu that we love in Klaw.