Boiled VS Steamed Blue Crabs | Head To Head Comparison

Five months ago I did a poll on my youtube channel in the community section and I was asking all of you, my subscribers, my viewers, who would like to see a video of bald

blue

crab versus steam, it's like it was a big theft Many years between the east coast around Maryland and here on the Gulf coast we do it two totally different ways and they think they had the best way we think we had the best way and today I want to figure that out and see what happens with that ? We're going to start with that right after this, before we start.

I want to say a big thank you to Camera on Seafood for sponsoring this video. They are the largest distributor of Maryland

blue

crab in the world. At 10 locations in Maryland and Pennsylvania they had three food trucks that also circulated in that area. Thank you so much for sending fantastic looking

crabs

. Also big shout out to Daviesuk. Thank you very much for being a very good subscriber and loving me. videos and move on, find out who told me that, so thanks buddy, I really appreciate it. Big shout out to you Dave, busy, these

crabs

were shipped yesterday according to what I received in the email, shipping notification around 3:30 Maryland time, wandering around. around 10:30 this Saturday morning, so I haven't done the math, but that was much less than 24 hours.

The ice pack was still nice and cold. They have wet paper on top of these. Wow, look at those beautiful ones. They are still alive. They're just dormant from being cold and freezing all night, if you left them a little warm they would start to come back to life and start to crack and all that good stuff, but pretty crabs, let's look under the belly. there yeah we have rust that's usually a good indication oh sorry move it's very dear so it's time to get started on this steaming versus boiling thing and what we can come up with so we can figure it out but I'm telling you I'll say it straight, you know, we're just talking about cooking methods here, we're talking about boiling crabs, we're talking about steaming crabs, there are other methods too, hey Forrest, I know everything there is to know about the business of crab fishing.

You can steam them, you can roast them, you can roast them, you can bake them, you can roast them, you can fry them, you even have stuffed crabs, crab cakes, you have fried soft shell po-boys, Krabbe gumbo, you have crab soup, you have crab soup . you have marinated crab claws you have fried crab claws you have crab sauce you have crab souffle you have melted crab you have devil crabs you have crab-stuffed flounder you have crab balls you have crab salad you have crab grits you have crab pasta that's what El is all about The point of this was to make it clear that steaming is just two different methods of cooking crabs.

There are many methods that you know and there are many different recipes that you can make with crabs, so I hope that clarified that. people out there and you might hear the burner on, we're dodging the storms again today. I went a

head

and lit the ball in the pot, we'll start with a bowling alley. I'll show you here in a few minutes. it's still basting it's getting ready to move in I'm going to show you the seasonings we're adding you can see the steam we're about to boil yes sir okay we're going to start this party off with four and a half pound seafood boil over heat of swamp.

I'll show you how to kill that foam. Check this out, let's go in with a couple cups of liquid crab boil, it'll calm him down right now. I usually don't use it. I only use that from here to here at about two and a half cups, but with crabs their shells are so thick and hard to penetrate that you really need to increase it. I have two Zetas rounds with an extra spicy flow through a shit ball. The packages that come have about eight lemons, we are going to squeeze them and drop them into the ball mixture.

The last one now, as you'll find out later, when you steam crabs, they use vinegar. I also use vinegar, but it's called. with wheezing and boiling hot sauce don't put this whole bottle in right now for people watching previous videos the bags I'm using are all cotton no dyes they don't taste anything they're bowling bag disease or what What are they. It's designed for this, it's for quartered onions. In this one, I think six, five or six

head

s of garlic, I cut the tops off and I also took some celery and diced it really thickly, so I'm.

I'm going to put the lid back on. I'm going to cut this ball into something where it's still forming into balls but not as violently. It's been fifteen minutes and as you can see it's a nice boil and I have this flame as low as possible and the flames still stay blue without turning red this problem I lit it right here I'm going to put this fire out okay fires out let's load this with two dozen crabs four five six seven is that nine 10 11 14 15 16 I'm going to cover the fire again, let's go to maximum power, they achieve a rolling ball very quickly.

I tell you what I just put all those cold crabs in there and we're already about to boil I'm in Thomas we're at 5:26 we're going to 529 I'm going to put out this fire okay we've been there for three minutes you already read I meant that this reading already You can keep the lid on, turn off the heat, now we're going to let it sit for five minutes just like that, that water isn't going to cool down much. In five minutes, we're going to have some cooked crabs and at that point we're going to cool them down.

In reality, we've been sitting longer. seven minutes and I hope you understand what I'm doing here. Most people tell you to roll these crabs into balls for ten minutes on high heat, some say fifteen and you are actually overcooking the crabs by doing that. What I did was put all the seasonings in here, get them on a rolling ball head as hot as possible, which is 212 degrees because I live at sea level and then we turned off the heat, dropped in the cold crabs and then turned it back on at 30 seconds. This thing was already starting to boil, it's not a hard ball, but it's starting to boil in another minute.

Hard ball, ball for three minutes. Put the lid on or keep the lid on. Turn off the heat and that's it. I'm going to write maintaining extremely high cooking temperatures compared to the internal temperature of the crab without the risk of overcooking it and making it mushy, so that's what we've done now. I'm taking the cover off, so now I move on. once the ball is in place we will open this valve and cool this pot, as you can see it has running water around it cooling the size of this pot, okay so we are dealing with blue crabs with claws and they are easy to remove, It seems like most of them still have the claws intact that we put here, so we didn't have any crabs take off their claws like you can, especially if you don't put ice on them, you can take a live crab, drop it in boiling water, it's in one shot, some calls, but you still have to do it very carefully and let the balls in this bowl do this job that will cool this down quickly, we'll just win.

Don't just sit here and do this, keep the water moving for the next three minutes. If you take a look at this part, you won't see any crabs, that's because they all have st. just like the crabs, they're going to fill up on this water this season, water with all this goodness and they're going to sink, which means they're really absorbing it and all we're going to do now is close this valve on the ball. has done its job, the water cools enough for them to sink and we'll let them sit for about 30 minutes and in the meantime we'll turn on the steamer, steam some crabs.

First we're going to steam them in apple cider vinegar, okay we're going to use about half of this, this is 3.78 liters, now we add beer, no one said what kind I'm using Bud Light, that's what I'm drinking . Hey, let's go for it. I'm going to try to go in with 50% of one and 50% of the other, so I'll get the rest. This beer here. I'm going in with a six pack. I think it goes. Well, let me show you my steaming basket. Some of you may remember this from previous videos from a couple of years ago. It has a trap door that you can place at any level inside this basket, as you can see here.

I am a couple. maybe two hundred two and a half three inches up and that's fine, you just don't want your crowds going into the liquid, you don't want anything but pure vapor, so let's go ahead and stack these crabs and make ourselves a layer for I think everyone knows what they use there in Maryland's Old Bay and it's not the only one, there are other seasonings that have become very popular there, just like ours, which Iran is here at one time was like the only Cajun seasoning they existed and now. you have a lot of them so you know that doesn't surprise me but let's go with the traditional obey and all you want to do is just sprinkle them on your crabs and get a nice thick coating just take it. there it is, now we're going to build another layer on top of this layer, there we go, I'm going to put this on steam and then we'll put the crabs in there once it's

steamed

really hard before you smell vinegar in the air we're about to boil I just to put the basket there with the seasoned crabs we're going to continue with the lid we're going to let them rock for exactly 20 minutes we've been there for exactly 20 minutes we're going to take the Remove the lid, they're nice and pink, they look ready, let me cut this burner off.

I'm going to take this basket out of here and we're going to set it all aside, let it cool a little bit and then. we'll put them in a nice chest like the others, but in a separate cooler where we know which one it's not hard to tell which is which, the

steamed

crabs obviously have all the seasonings on them and the other crabs. We're not done, we have bald crabs, we have steamed crabs and here they are and if you're wondering why this one is upside down, I'll show you now because this is the first one I'm going to start. with we are going to remove this apron we are going to remove the shell from the body now I don't know if you see that but that is pure liquid gold this is the juice that they are trying to keep in this shell that is the reason why they are now going from bottom to up everything I'm going to do from here just take and remove these dead man's fingers, now we're going to bend them, we're going to break them in half, we're going to remove this. a little piece of shell right here and I'm going after the prize a piece of crab meat right here on the tail of the crab and there we're going to see that large amount of meat and the reason for that container from what I have from what I understand is that the waters get a lot colder there in Maryland and crabs naturally have a lot of fat reserves, which allows the meat to build up on everything during the winter months so they survive, here we go, that's my first crab Maryland, my real Maryland.

Crab that I know for a fact comes out of the Chesapeake Bay. I've had crabs on the east coast, but I was doing research another day and discovered there had been a shortage of crabs in that area for a long time. last ten years, so they actually ship to a lot of places in Louisiana, but these are guaranteed 1% Chesapeake Maryland crabs and I absolutely taste the difference. This is fantastic. Hmm, it's seasoned and comes so well now I've heard people say. which is just a wet mess when you boil them and all that I don't know, let's get closer to this, see if we can show this meat right here.

I mean, that's not a wet mess, that's just perfection, that's what it is. moist yes very moist delicious you bet we're going to go ahead and get into this steamed crab Maryland style move the apron move the shell fold it and open it same move that little bit of shell there we go for this piece of crab meat look at all that meat, oh my goodness, so good, it has a little juice just from the steaming. I'll tell you the truth, the taste is a little different, of course, because of the seasonings we use, but they are both excellent, I meant.

OMG these are so good, I'll tell you I'm not going to sigh because and it's not because I don't mind getting hit for it, it's because I honestly can't taste that much difference between them, one isn't wetter. than the other, they are both great cooking methods, there are two fantastic ways to cook crabs from two different regions and I recommend that if you are in Maryland, you try boiling it and if you are here on the coast, try In fact, they are showing up more places that make steamed crabs. There was a place about three doors down from where I was raised that had crab balls and now they're doing steamed crab.

I meant that it's not a bad method at all, it's not a bad method either. boiling hot so I hope you enjoyed this video and I want to thank Cameron Seafood once again for sending some fantastic meaty Maryland blue crabs. These things are fantastic and anyone can ship them to the lower 48, like I said before. links in the description box for them so if you've never tried this you really owe it to yourself and you can order them already steamed ready to go, you can eat them cold when they arrive or he will give you instructions on how to reheat them. through steam very simple very easy I hope you endure the video until thenext smoke the ribs