What makes an X-Large Crab so special?
What makes an X-Large Crab so special?
What makes an X-Large Crab so special?
Most blue crabs live to around 3 years, especially with healthy waterways teeming with eelgrass, snails, insects, clams, oysters, and fish. With proper nourishment, they have the chance to grow to huge sizes. In fact, the largest bay crab caught weighed 1.1 pounds and measured 10.72 inches on the Chesapeake Crab Grading Scale. Not all crabs can grow this large so when a crabber pots one this large, it’s time to find a taxidermy! Typical catches contain crabs weighing one third pound and measuring in as a large, around 6”. X-Large crabs impress since they are a rarity. Growing almost a third larger between molts, an extra-large has the chance to pack the shell with mounds of flaky lump, and increasingly larger back fin jumbo. To sum up the deliciousness, an extra large is ripe for the picking!
Picking a crab requires patience and skills. With such a delicacy as the extra-large, make sure you don’t let any meat go unpicked. Of course, it’s easy to reach a mound of meat when the crab naturally boasts more. First, take the back tab and snap it up and off. The removed tab will leave a small hole under the top shell, where you can easily place your finger and pull up the shell. Second, break off all the legs and claws and save them for later. Also, keep the top shell for a perfect crab imperial “bowl.” Then, snap the crab body in equal halves. Remove all the “dead man’s fingers” and gooky organ material. Third, begin picking flaky lump from the crab halves, and pristine jumbo junks from the back-swimming leg region. Fourth, get the claw cracker and tap a crack to extract claw meat. Snap each leg in half and suck out the meat. Fifth, grab another crab and savor another!
