How to Eat Crabs

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Whether you are dealing with hard or soft-shelled crabs, the meat can be delicious but hard to handle. Learn how to get to the tasty crab meat without making a mess.

Step 1: Boil or steam hard-shelled crabs
Boil or steam hard-shelled crabs. Cook until the crab's shell turns pink.

Step 2: Remove the front and back legs
Remove the front and back legs by snapping them away from the crab's body with your hands.

Tip
Place a layer of newspaper or Kraft paper over your table before opening the crabs to catch bits of shell and juice.

Step 3: Remove the apron on the underside
Use your fingers to open the heart-shaped apron on the underside of a hard or soft-shelled crab's body. Pull the sides of the apron back and snap it off.

Tip
Ask your seafood dealer to clean soft-shelled crabs for you. They will remove the head, the apron, and the inedible meats.

Step 4: Twist the top shell off and remove inedible parts
Twist the top shell off of the hard-shelled crab using a knife or your hands. Use a knife to clean out the yellowish parts inside the hard or soft-shelled crab that are inedible.

Step 5: Break the crab in half to expose meat
Hold the hard-shelled crab with both hands and break the body in half down the center to expose a lump of crab meat.

Step 6: Crack open the legs and remove meat]
Use a small wooden mallet to crack open each of the legs. Remove the meat with your fingers or a cocktail fork.

Tip
You will get only a small amount of meat from each hard-shelled crab. The weight of the edible meat is only about 15 percent of the weight of the crab in its shell.

Step 7: Cook meat
Cook the meat. Bread and fry the whole soft-shelled crab, or use boiled meat from a hard-shelled crab in a salad or crab cake.

Did You Know?
The record for the world's largest crab cake was set in 2008 by a Baltimore company. It weighed 235 pounds and took nine hours to cook.