Tonight, I made some wonderful crabs, courtesy of a recipe provided to me by Lemoncheese. Since it went so well, I thought I'd share the love. The recipe is for 6 dungeness crabs.
First, take 2 1/2 pounds of butter. (Shouldn't every recipe start with 2 1/2 pounds of butter. Clarify it. You really do need to clarify it - it prevents burning later on. Chill the clarified butter. Once it's cooled, mix in more cayenne pepper than you would expect, followed by more paprika than you would expect. Seriously. Dump it in there. Think a 1/3 to a 1/2 a jar. The resulting thing should be a sort-of reddish orange. Add salt and garlic. I put in 6 clover for 2 crabs myself. Set this mixture aside. If you make it in advance, keep it cool until you use it, it is butter after all.
Get some crabs. Boil them and then gut them. (Or have the friendly guys at the market do this step for you) Cut them in half.
Preheat the oven to 400.
Whack the crabs and their legs with a mallet or the back end of a knife, so that you've cracked all the shells so that butter could seep in, but not so much that appendages start detaching. Put the crabs on or in something (I used a roasting pan) that you can bake in. Rub the butter mixture all over them. If you did things right, you should have a lot of butter. Use it all. Pile it on. (It's going to melt pretty quickly)
Put the crabs in the oven. Bake them until the butter starts to smoke, at which point you should say "good" and then bake them a little longer. Or, if the butter doesn't smoke (happened to me) just bake them for a while. Mine were probably in there a good 20-25 minutes. They'll look done to you at some point, at which point you should take them out. Or not. You should also baste them with the melted butter once or twice.
Eat the crabs.
First, take 2 1/2 pounds of butter. (Shouldn't every recipe start with 2 1/2 pounds of butter. Clarify it. You really do need to clarify it - it prevents burning later on. Chill the clarified butter. Once it's cooled, mix in more cayenne pepper than you would expect, followed by more paprika than you would expect. Seriously. Dump it in there. Think a 1/3 to a 1/2 a jar. The resulting thing should be a sort-of reddish orange. Add salt and garlic. I put in 6 clover for 2 crabs myself. Set this mixture aside. If you make it in advance, keep it cool until you use it, it is butter after all.
Get some crabs. Boil them and then gut them. (Or have the friendly guys at the market do this step for you) Cut them in half.
Preheat the oven to 400.
Whack the crabs and their legs with a mallet or the back end of a knife, so that you've cracked all the shells so that butter could seep in, but not so much that appendages start detaching. Put the crabs on or in something (I used a roasting pan) that you can bake in. Rub the butter mixture all over them. If you did things right, you should have a lot of butter. Use it all. Pile it on. (It's going to melt pretty quickly)
Put the crabs in the oven. Bake them until the butter starts to smoke, at which point you should say "good" and then bake them a little longer. Or, if the butter doesn't smoke (happened to me) just bake them for a while. Mine were probably in there a good 20-25 minutes. They'll look done to you at some point, at which point you should take them out. Or not. You should also baste them with the melted butter once or twice.
Eat the crabs.
powered by performancing firefox
Subscribe
0 Comments