This week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe was a rather unusual Crab and Grapefruit Salad. At first, this did not appeal to me, as it contained raw chilli, onion and capsicum. However, when I tasted the finished product, I was pleasantly surprised - the grapefruit and vegetables melded beautifully with crab, resulting in what would be a very elegant starter at a dinner party.
I have never cooked a crab before, so approached it with trepidation. This is my blue swimmer crab prior to cooking:
Handsome, isn't he? His lovely blue coat turns red as soon as he is added to the pot of boiling water (to which I added brown sugar and salt at the suggestion of a website):
Here is the crab, all cooked and sitting in a sinkful of cold water to halt the cooking process:
I found a Youtube video on how to shell a crab. After removing the top plate (called the carapice, if you are interested), you break the crab in half:
Then you crack open the claws and shell to remove the meat, in my case using a nut cracker. After all that, this was all the crab meat that resulted:
Sigh ... Oh well, it was a surprisingly good salad.
21 comments:
That looks great, the first and only time I made crab I screamed like hell and i had no idea how to eat them after hahaha
http://bakinginspain.blogspot.com.es/2012/02/soggy-rice-with-crab.html
You're brave! Although I like eating crab, I don't think I could work up the courage to cook it.
The salad sounds delicious and something I would totally like. :)
Wow, you even cooked your own crab. I am glad I was able to get mine already shelled & ready to use. Whew.
Looks lovely.
It does sound good :) I would have assumed that those ingredients raw might have overpowered the crab but good to hear that it was delicious! :)
We live in land locked Utah so I have never cooked fresh crab. When my daughter lived in Australia--Ulladulla to be exact she was right on the coast. She had the best sea food ever, what a treat. I need to try this dish.
OMG, kudos for actually boiling and making your own crab. I punked out and used pre-shelled lump crab meat.
Oh I'm so jealous that you were able to find fresh crab. He certainly is handsome! But crazy how little meat you get out of that big guy.
We also enjoyed this salad, but we probably would have enjoyed it more with fresh crab meat. What a beautiful crab! So glad you enjoyed this one. I was also pleasantly surprised that I liked it so much.
Wow…I’m impressed! Cooking your own crab! I bought a can of lump crab meat. However, the salad was delicious! Have a great weekend!
Poor little crab!
He was no longer with us when I bought him Duckie - someone else did the deed.
What a lovely salad (though you were probably hoping for a larger one.) I'm not sure I could have cooked and cleaned a crab for this one, but you made it sound easy!
I took the easy way out and opened a can :) But I bet your crab was even better...so glad you enjoyed, too!
First of all, it's Friday night. Date night. Mark asked if I wanted to go out this evening to a movie or something and I said, "Thanks so much, but can I have a raincheck as I am behind in reading Gaye's blog times 15 and if I don't catch up soon she will no longer be speaking to me." So here I go, be prepared for your inbox to be full of wordy little comments about all your cooking/baking/living! This salad looks wonderfully beautiful and delicious to me. Just so pretty! The saga of the Little Blue Crab Who Turned to Red was interesting and fun as well as I have never cooked my own before, much less ripped him apart and find all the goodies, so now I think I might be able to do that. Thanks for the tutorial!
I'm so impressed that you cooked a whole crab! I think I would have just bought some crabmeat!
I'm so impressed with your cooking project! The blue crab is so pretty, when you come to San Francisco you will need to try our Dungeness crab which is also very good;-) Sounds like this salad was a winner!
I'm impressed that you cooked a crab for this salad. Crabs are not hanging out much in our desert. unless they are lost, so we can choose from frozen, canned, or something really expensive. But I enjoyed this salad anyway, with a few changes. Hubby is from the East Coast and used to go crabbing, so he would be jealous of your crab. Nice to learn new things. I learned that grapefruit and crab go well together, and you learned to cook a crab. Good for us!
Wow! You started with a live crab. Very brave, and I'm sure you had the most delicious salad of us all. Nice work!
OMG wow that's so impressive you used live crab and cooked it yourself!! :D I d never be able to do that :) i get a little scared of it when it moves hehe ~ yum yum salad :D
You are so dedicated! I don't think I could have handle the disappointment of not enjoying the salad if I had gone to all the work of cooking and shelling the crab!!
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