Of the crustacean family, probably the biggest and sweetest of all is the meat from the legs of the King Crab. Fishing for this crab is one of the professions with the highest mortality in the world given the climatic conditions where they are found. Asides from the risk is the quota system which increases its scarcity. This is why it’s a very expensive type of meat. All this risk is offset by the sweet and meaty taste of these gems of nature. They are a real beautiful pod!
However, if you’re lucky to discover this type of creature commercially, there are various ways you can cook it. You can boil it, steam, grill, or smoke it. However, the crab legs are best prepared smoked:
First, carefully break the legs apart at the joints. With the blunt back of the knife, you carefully hit the center of the crab leg so that the shell can break. As soon as the shell is broken all around, you can add the flavors and the rubs.
The meat of the Snow Crabs is slightly sweet with a salty freshness of seawater. When preparing it, you should not cover the taste with lots of aromas. Butter, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, paprika, and salt are enough. Meanwhile, you can also add some spicy mustard sauce. You can consider The Spice Way Mustard Seed. You’ll have whole seeds in the resealable bag and they don’t need to be ground.
Since the snow crab legs are already pre-cooked, they only need to be warmed up. You can prepare the crab legs on the Kamado Joe Classic II with inlaid deflector stones for indirect heat. The Traeger Ironwood 885 is also a good smoker/grill for crab legs.
King Crab is great and tasty. However, compared to King Crab, the meat of the Snow Crabs is slightly sweet with a salty freshness of seawater. Snow crabs are also quite easy to break and handle than King Crab.
Get the smoker heated and the snow crab legs are heated indirectly for 20 minutes. At the same time, put the butter in a fire-proof bowl on the grill so that it can liquefy. Finely chopped garlic and a splash of lemon juice are added to the bowl.
After the cooking time is complete, take the crab legs off the grill and the hard work begins. But don’t worry, with the right-hand movements you can get to the meat quickly. First, carefully break the legs apart at the joints. With the blunt back of the knife, you carefully hit the center of the crab leg so that the shell breaks.
As soon as the shell is broken all around, you can simply pull it off and carefully pull out the meat. Crab leg scissors can be used here. But even here you can crack the shell with light blows of the back of a knife and carefully pull the meat out. Special seafood forks with which the meat can be removed from the shell are helpful. It’s therefore important to have a kit of best smoker accessories that have these types of tools. With a little practice, you can get the hang of it relatively quickly and get to the tender meat without any problems.
Crab legs are best served with lemon wedges and melted butter on the side. Once you remove the meat from the shells, squeeze the lemon juice over the meat and dip it inside melted butter. You can keep the butter in a container to dip the crab in it before giving it a bite.
Before eating, the crab meat is carefully pulled out of the shell. You can crack the shell with light blows of the back of a knife and carefully pull the meat out. Special seafood forks with which the meat can be removed from the shell are helpful.
With a little practice, you can get the hang of it relatively quickly and get to the tender meat without any problems. Then it is simply dipped into the flavored butter and eaten immediately.
Snow crab legs are a real delicacy! The meat has a sweet, mild taste and is really aromatic. By no means fishy, but you can taste the sea flavor.
Crab legs are delicious, but there are a few things to remember when incorporating them into your diet. For starters, the crab can contain high amounts of sodium, which could be detrimental to your health, especially if your potassium levels are not optimized.
Potassium is often used as an electrolyte, it helps to relax the arterial walls of the body, inhibit muscle cramps, and lower blood pressure levels, to name a few of its benefits.
Arguably, maintaining healthy sodium to potassium ratio might be more effective in promoting better health and preventing disease compared to limiting or reducing your total sodium intake, which is what conventional health guidelines recommend.
We must also emphasize the importance of knowing where your seafood comes from. For example: in 2015, the state of California temporarily halted fishing for Dungeness crabs as well as rock crabs as high amounts of domoic acid, which are neurotoxins, were found in these shellfish.
Consuming too many contaminated crabs could lead to amnesic shellfish poisoning, characterized by the death of neurons in an area of the brain necessary for proper memory function. To prevent harm to yourself and your loved ones, we suggest:
Since these legs come previously cooked, our recommendation is to cook them grilled or smoked (never boiled despite being one of the methods recommended by other people since this method slightly water the flavor).
Firm white crab meat with a sweet aroma is an indicator that the legs are precooked. Avoid overcooking them as you will get less flavorful and rubbery crab meat.
As unconventional as it sounds, grilling or smoking them, either using a charcoal smoker or a gas grill, can be a quick and easy way to cook crab legs. Roasting is said to provide better temperature control, although using the charcoal method can add a smoky flavor to your pieces.
When preparing smoked crab legs that have been precooked, it is important not to heat it too long and too hot, otherwise, the fine meat will get a rubbery consistency.
