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Soft Shell Crab


Mayhaw Man

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You can try some of these guys, but it is just a bit early (especially in light of this little cool spell we have had this week). Softshells that are sold commercially here in Louisiana are the by roduct of the crab catch and alot of hard work for the producer. Suring the summer they are very plentiful (as are regular blue crabs) but they never really get down to a bargain. I used to have a guy in Venice, LA who was a homebrewer and he would trade me softshells for brewing grain. It was a great deal, I hated to see it end.

Good article explaining soft shells

How it's done and you can do it yourself if you want to

When buster crabs are pulled out of crab nets they are seperated from the rest of the catch and taken back to the dock to be put into shallow tanks in which they are allowed to molt. These tanks must be checked every couple of hours as a crab that has lost is shell cannot move until it begins to harden again and the rest of the more mobile denizens of the molting tank will make a snack out of their helpless neighbor.

Flying Soft Shells

Seafood Online

Quality Crabs from Lake Ponchatrain

Hope this helps. Next weekend I will be enjoying, at exactly 6:45 on Friday p.m., a softshell crab poboy from the Seafood Galley Booth at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. I will most likely do the same thing for the next 7 days. I love that sandwich :wub:

Brooks Hamaker, aka "Mayhaw Man"

There's a train everyday, leaving either way...

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You can try some of these guys, but it is just a bit early (especially in light of this little cool spell we have had this week). Softshells that are sold commercially here in Louisiana are the by roduct of the crab catch and alot of hard work for the producer. Suring the summer they are very plentiful (as are regular blue crabs) but they never really get down to a bargain. I used to have a guy in Venice, LA who was a homebrewer and he would trade me softshells for brewing grain. It was a great deal, I hated to see it end.

Good article explaining soft shells

How it's done and you can do it yourself if you want to

When buster crabs are pulled out of crab nets they are seperated from the rest of the catch and taken back to the dock to be put into shallow tanks in which they are allowed to molt. These tanks must be checked every couple of hours as a crab that has lost is shell cannot move until it begins to harden again and the rest of the more mobile denizens of the molting tank will make a snack out of their helpless neighbor.

Flying Soft Shells

Seafood Online

Quality Crabs from Lake Ponchatrain

Hope this helps. Next weekend I will be enjoying, at exactly 6:45 on Friday p.m., a softshell crab poboy from the Seafood Galley Booth at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. I will most likely do the same thing for the next 7 days. I love that sandwich :wub:

Brooks, Thanks for the links. I'm hoping to saute up some of these puppies for a dinner party on the 24th. Sauteed with a some butter, garlic and capers from Pantelleria - Yum, but only if they're fresh. :wub: .

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

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- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

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Another great way to cook these things is to put them in a water type smoker under a fair amount of heat (much higher than normal smoke temp-if you have the ability to adjust the temp, anyway). They don't have to be cooked for long before they are bright red and have a nice smoky taste. Delicious.

I also use a fish basket sometimes (one of those flat two sided screen things) and cook them over a charcoal or wood fire). Once again delicious.

I also like them sauteed in butter along with onion and garlic and some zippy peppery seasoning (your choice-I like Crystal Hot Sauce and coarse crushed black pepper).

They're kind of hard to screw up. A fresh softshell is a good thing.

Brooks Hamaker, aka "Mayhaw Man"

There's a train everyday, leaving either way...

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Oooooh, do I disagree. They are easy to screw up. Method #1: Batter it

and fry it. The batter overwhelms the taste. Method #2: Freeze 'em; mushy

useless pieces of semi-crab.

Personally, the soft shell recipe in Union Sq #1 is just delightful; curry flowered

crabs with a carrot sauce. Really tasty.

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Oooooh, do I disagree.  They are easy to screw up.  Method #1: Batter it

and fry it.

No offense intended, Kahrs, but I'm going to disagree right back. Battering, if done properly (seasoned flour only, applied with a light hand) is just fine. An overwhelming batter would be a disaster. The only fish I can think of that a heavy duty batter would be good on would be the talapia I cooked for us last night. It tasted like nothing except the caramelized onion, lemon and oil I cooked them in. No flavor...zip. Could have been eating cardboard with embellishments. But a fresh soft shell, lightly floured and cooked in hot butter, then onto a good sourdough roll with homemade tartar sauce. It might not be heaven on earth, but it sure ain't bad :raz:.

THW

"My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne." John Maynard Keynes

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and i'll respectfully disagree again, with a somewhat contrarian view. i like the milk, egg, flour crust sometimes. it gives you a good solid crunch and i haven't noticed it interfering with the crab flavor. i do love softshells and homemade tartar sauce.

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And I respectfully disagree as well.

I love fried softshells, when they are done right. The trick is to make sure that coating is not too thick and does not take too long to cook. Softshell crabs do not require much in the way of heat to get them done through and through and the mistake that many people make when frying is to coat them too thickly-by the time the coating is cooked, the crab is overcooked. This is a bad thing. Frying soft shells is one of those things that should require training and a license before you are turned loose on an unsuspecting public. :wink:

At the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival the nice folks at Galley Seafood have been serving up delicious and perfectly fried softshells and placing them on New Orleans french bread for about 15 years. This is a good start to a great sandwich. The addition of some good tartar sauce, a little hot Zatarains mustard, and some crystal hot sauce is just about all anyone can ask of a sandwich.

Brooks Hamaker, aka "Mayhaw Man"

There's a train everyday, leaving either way...

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No offense intended, Kahrs, but I'm going to disagree right back.  Battering, if done properly (seasoned flour only, applied with a light hand) is just fine.

And I, with and in no particular respect, must most sincerely interject a technical quibble: that doesn't really qualify as battering, does it? I always thought battering required a batter; though I'll admit it's hardly consistent of me then not to insist that breading requires bread. It should, actually, but the fact remains that I sometimes let it slide and refer to this process as breading, whereas I guess I really oughta grow up and call it flouring.

Flour pour! :raz:

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brooks, my memory of the softshells at galatoires was that they had a very definite crust. is that incorrect? when i did a recipe last year, i tried the one from their book, but even i found it too thick. i added a lttle more milk (iirc) to thin it and it worked gloriously. though a friend who cooked it said it was too thick for her.

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I confess, a flour coating is not a batter to me. So, in a sense, I agree with the opposition. However, I have had many a soft shell with a thick coating of batter (whatever that is...). And, if you can only taste the batter and not the crab, then what is the point? If you check out the Union Sq. recipe I mentioned, you will see that the crabs are coated in a curry flour. As a saucier, I would demand a vehicle for my sauce...

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brooks, my memory of the softshells at galatoires was that they had a very definite crust. is that incorrect? when i did a recipe last year, i tried the one from their book, but even i found it too thick. i added a lttle more milk (iirc) to thin it and it worked gloriously. though a friend who cooked it said it was too thick for her.

Russ,

They've got them two ways on the menu and then pretty much have at least one of those Galitoire's, "bring me something interesting with a softshell in it" specials all of the time.

They do them as Softshell Meuniere-which is about as traditional as it gets in butter laden New Orleans and they do straight up fried softshell, which definitely has a crust-much like the one I described above-single dip in egg wash and into seasoned flour. Fried in very hot oil for a whatever the minimum of time it is to get it golden. Galitoire's fried soft shells are pretty damn tasty. The trick to doing them at home is getting the egg wash right and not going crazy dredging them in the flour. You are going for a light, crunchy crust-not a big thick goopy thing like fish and chips.

I have never seem the actual recipe, but I would be very suprised if they were using a batter rather than a eggwash/flour combo. I don't know anyone in town who uses one for that kind of food (clearly many types of oriental fry is done this way).

Batter-liquid stand alone stuff that fish gets dunked into in order to form a crust while frying.

This is not the same as eggwash/flour combo.

Edited to correct meuniere before anybody noticed. :wink:

Brooks Hamaker, aka "Mayhaw Man"

There's a train everyday, leaving either way...

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Into the batter/flour fray:

When I cook them, I only flour them. I like that extra little crunch that the dryness of flour imparts. Also, I am no damn good at battering (ask HWOE :wink: ).

However, the "Salt and Pepper Softshells" at NY Noodletown are in some sort of very light, tempura-style batter, and they are wonderful.

then again, meuniere with no coating at all are also good.

The bottom line is: softshells are delicious any way you deal with them as long as they're properly cleaned (I've had ones that were not, and yech.)

Edited by Suzanne F (log)
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They are just becoming available now. It's actually good to soak the crabs in milk, dry them off and lightly dredge in flour. Then saute in a hot pan with oil. Heads up though, those soft shells POP and will send that hot oil in the direction of your forearms.

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Into the batter/flour fray:

When I cook them, I only flour them.

...

then again, meuniere with no coating at all are also good.

Meuniere would be with flour. Meuniere is miller.

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As with most food items it's not so much how one cooks them as what one procures and how one preps them for cooking.

In the case of soft shells, they must be moving. Smell them, get your nose in it!Avoid at all costs the limp things sold in most stores that are just about dead.

"Can I clean them for you?" stores will ask. NO! Cleaning kills the crab and they will lose moisture until you cook them. Clean them yourself.

Correct way to clean. Pull off the apron underneath, also tells you the sex. Peel back the flaps and remove the gills. Use a sharp knife and cut right behind the eyes. DONE.

Coat with Wondra flour, season with salt and craked white pepper, fry in unsalted butter. Fresh lemon and eat! -Dick

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I can't believe there have been 20 replies and no one else grills them.

I clean them, marinate in XVOO, garlic, and a small amount of lemon. Sprinkly wiht Old Bay, slap 'em on the grill. Then I serve them in grilled sandwich buns with a homemade remoulade.

We cannot employ the mind to advantage when we are filled with excessive food and drink - Cicero

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I can't believe there have been 20 replies and no one else grills them.

I clean them, marinate in XVOO, garlic, and a small amount of lemon. Sprinkly wiht Old Bay, slap 'em on the grill. Then I serve them in grilled sandwich buns with a homemade remoulade.

One of the problems, here in CT is that a good supply of SSC is hard to come by and that just doesn't lend itself to much experimentation.

HC

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I can't believe there have been 20 replies and no one else grills them.

I clean them, marinate in XVOO, garlic, and a small amount of lemon. Sprinkly wiht Old Bay, slap 'em on the grill. Then I serve them in grilled sandwich buns with a homemade remoulade.

I do-look at my above response (which I have conveniently attached to this in order to keep you from tiring yourself out with all of the pesky scrolling :wink: )

Another great way to cook these things is to put them in a water type smoker under a fair amount of heat (much higher than normal smoke temp-if you have the ability to adjust the temp, anyway). They don't have to be cooked for long before they are bright red and have a nice smoky taste. Delicious.

I also use a fish basket sometimes (one of those flat two sided screen things) and cook them over a charcoal or wood fire). Once again delicious.

I also like them sauteed in butter along with onion and garlic and some zippy peppery seasoning (your choice-I like Crystal Hot Sauce and coarse crushed black pepper).

They're kind of hard to screw up. A fresh softshell is a good thing.

Brooks Hamaker, aka "Mayhaw Man"

There's a train everyday, leaving either way...

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I sometimes grill them too, but I cut up some fresh herbs (chives, a little oregano, tarragon, parsley) from the garden, and chop it up with some butter and garlic and then put the crabs with a dab of the herb butter and a little lemon juice into foil and put that on the grill. When you open the foil, the aroma will know you out!

Edited because I didn't read all the way thru Mayhaw Man's smoking/grilling post!

Edited by hathor (log)
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