How To Open Every Shellfish | Method Mastery | Epicurious

I'm Mike Cruz, Greenpoint Fish Wholesale Manager, and I'm here to show you how to prepare each

shellfish

when I prepare seafood. I like to have three knives with me, a large, heavy chef's knife, and a smaller, curved, overly stiff knife for trimming as well. like a thin flexible knife that is great for getting around shells and other intricate places, it actually has a very nice feature where it extends to pick up lobsters and crabs, an oyster knife that can go into the hinge very well, a clam knife , a Devane for shrimp and a scissors for seafood. which is great for cutting lobster tails without damaging the meat.

I have an offset spatula and for special circumstances we will use a light blue black crab, so this is a blue crab definitely native to East Coast waters, first things first. We are going to steam this crab for about six minutes, it will turn bright red and you will be ready to remove all the meat. We pick up the crab starting with its front claws, we will simply pinch directly from where it connects with the body downwards. and out the same thing with the other side down and out and we'll do the same thing with all the legs and the back swimmers here, so now we're left with just the body, we'll turn the crab upside down and lift up the apron here. just tear it off exposing an

open

ing there where we're going to stick our thumbs in and we're just going to take that top off.

Now here we have some gills, some other organs and we're just going to remove them. This is the face plate that I also just peel off, wipe away any excess organs from the central cavity and we'll just break this half right, peel back these little layers of cartilage that are holding the meat together and we'll now use a small chopping tool, very gently. Start pulling out the really delicate sweet crab meat, the meat will be covered in a super thin membrane, it peels very easily and you basically just want to stick the skewer into any little crevices you find and pull it out and scoop it out

every

where.

One last piece of meat that is your body now with the claws, separate the legs from the tongs, little knuckles, we will simply enter the most rounded part and begin to cut the crack that it will

open

and fry the meat of the claws. from there also the leg there really isn't much meat on these little hind legs here the best thing I would do with these is just suck them dry, it's really delicious, that's more or less how a soft shell blue crab breaks down, that's a blue crab that has melted so they are basically shedding their shell and during this phase their shells are soft you can actually eat the whole crab this way and they are currently out of season so now we have a frozen soft shell crab .

The crab's head is here and it has a bunch of organs that we won't eat today. Your first step will be to simply cut right behind the eyes, discard that section and then we'll flip the crab. On top of that we'll remove this section of the apron here and lift up the top shell and expose the gills here and just trim them off on the other side so this is a fully prepared soft shell crab ready to eat. fried in a perfect Dungeness crab sandwich these are a type of west coast crab really very sweet really delicious really tender meat when buying all live seafood you want to make sure they are alive look them in the eyes make sure they are convex and round no concave or sunken and people tend to steam them primarily and you should aim for 10 minutes per pound and then you can go on to about 5 minutes per pound so this is a cooked Dungeness crab, let's go with the crab. up and we'll start by just breaking the claws off the joint down here, we'll just pull down and swing out.

We'll do that for all of these. You really have to make sure you're in the joint when you do this. This now the legs are removed, we're going to start and we're just going to focus on the head, we turn it over and we're going to remove what's called the apron of the crab, this just comes off very easily and now that leaves you with a cavity. Put your thumbs like this and just throw your head back. This is what's called crab mustard and it's really delicious, so don't throw it away and keep it aside for now, so now we'll just focus.

Focus on the meat that's on the body itself, so we're going to remove these gills. You don't want to eat any extra bits that get in your way with your hands, for now these are the mouth organs. Remove them easily now split this crab in half which you can do with your hands they will just pull it away from you and separate it once again. Basically, you will break it into quarters once you have divided it into quarters. I will begin to see that there are small cavities that contain the skewer. Get in there and just go through the cavities.

They have sections of what almost looks like very thin plastic that separates all the meat and can easily penetrate the meat itself. so you need to be careful when you do this to make sure you are only removing the meat from the crab. Let's move on to the legs, we'll just take away this first little digit. Here we can. just take it out and throw it away and then we'll break it down at the joints. I'll break it in one direction until it's free and then I'll come out the other side and ideally this will remove any bits of cartilage if you have a pair of seafood scissors here they are curved to avoid the meat you can go right in and just cut it off and you can break the shell to open it, take out some really beautiful whole pieces of crab leg and we use our skewer just to get it out, so That's a leg and I'll make a claw again by pressing on the opposite side of the joint, remove this section first, then the knuckle and then the actual claw on the hinge, just put it in once until it breaks on that side, bring it over to the other side. and you should be taking out that whole piece of cartilage that's right in the middle of all the meat on your claw, grab the scissors and let's cut, go through the knuckle, keep the clock ticking on this beautiful full piece of leg. and this is how crab legs are collected.

A great way to find extra bits of shell that may be trapped in the crab meat is a black light Maine lobster. You will always want to have a live product with lobster specifically and most seafood in general you will never want. When eating a lobster that has been dead for over 24 hours, the meat inside their bodies breaks down very quickly, so essentially having a live lobster in front of you tells you I know this is safe I know this is fresh I know that This will be delicious before you cook it, you'll want to kill it as humanely as possible, place the knife at the base of the head where the body meets, press down and just squeeze, there may be some residual movement but that's just the nervousness. firing system, you can continue with cutting if you want directly in half, if you were looking to grill the tails but either way your lobster is now ready to be prepared, take off these bands which are there to protect it from being pinched, choose the lobster up the body hold it pretty firmly, you'll want to place the tail about where the joint joins the body, twist it one direction, twist it another direction just to loosen it up and then do a full rotation with it while pulling out so that it stays there.

You're going to have your lobster tail, you're going to get to the front side of the lobster and you're going to grab the claw from where it connects to the body, you're going to pinch right there and you're going to just twist and pull the same thing out to the other side and then these little legs are going to separate. one by one, so here you have your tail, your pincer, your crusher and your legs, we'll take the claws and again, where that joint attaches, here you'll just want to use your thumbs to snap open like that. you have a knuckle that you will just twist the same way as the claw so you will have a lobster completely shredded and ready to cook cooked Maine lobster so here I have a cooked lobster.

I'm going to show you how to get all the meat out, so starting with the arms, we're just going to pinch from the joints down and twist out and go into the back tail, give it a twist in one direction and finish in the other direction and then, for the legs, snap them to get the tail meat coming out the easiest way, these back fins here are peeled off by simply twisting them back and you will see the tail meat start to be exposed by holding the lobster tail between your fingers with both hands, give it a squeeze once and then you will move it away from you and pull it out, this should free the entire tail without leaving anything inside, moving on to the crusher claw, pull this claw down on its joint as soon as you hear that crunch , pull up on the other side to release the bottom half and just give it a little twist when it comes out and you should leave the claw meat still attached to the fabric.

From here we can separate the knuckle and then again from the leg joint with the crusher. claw, use a heavy knife and just hit it right on the fattest part, same thing on the other side, once you have those two sides cracked, just take your hand and mash it up being careful not to destroy the meat inside. move that claw out the same with the tweezers, pull it out for the knuckle meat, you can use a specialized tool like this one made specifically for removing lobster meat, go in through one of the openings, run the tip along of the shell try to stay as tight as possible and not break the meat coming in on the other side and you can simply push and move the meat from the knuckles to the remaining parts of the leg, insert a skewer and the end of a spoon. something thin and not flexible in this first joint here and you can come out and that meat comes out just like that and often the underutilized part of the lobster is actually its legs, people think that there is little or no meat on them and they don't see it as a project worth undertaking, it's actually very easy and quite fun, you have a rolling pin, you place them on a cutting board and, like toothpaste, you can just squeeze the meat out. squeeze this out so it's a fully picked lobster your crusher your claw your knuckles your similar meats and then the rest as meat and your tail benefits this is a live crab they are actually able to traverse small distances of land

every

time I get these at my job you will find them in the office you will find them in the locker room you will find them in the bathroom when you least expect it you look down and there is only one crab waiting for you so they are really fun and easy to make and eat so if you are making crabs of river, I would definitely suggest 10 to 15 minutes for a big pot, just let them cook with everything and bring them out with a little bit of bright red, so here we have Our cooked crabs are like mini lobsters, so what you do is separate the tail from the body, hold the tail and turn it around.

This is what you eat in a crab, but it's not the only thing you necessarily enjoy. you want to make sure you suck out all these delicious juices from the head, it's just delicious, so for the tail, these little back fins, remove them quickly, ideally, that will also remove any kind of intestinal traces, you can just peel them straight away. super quick and easy shell simple like that delicious langoustine langoustine is actually a general term for what is a chubby type of lobster, we're going to remove this set of back fins from the tail, pull them back and just twist them to separate them from the meat . the tail is exposed by grabbing each of its sections between two fingers I'm just going to squeeze until you hear a crack I'm going to do that for each little segment here this one actually has some really beautiful blue eggs underneath continue To peel off the shell, basically, this one thing we'll just peel off into individual segments all the way and we'll do the same thing on the other side.

Once that's done, you can flip it over and start peeling it back and really reveal that. Precious tear that bottom membrane, peel it very gently and you will be left with an absolutely magnificent prawn. I would barely poach this thing or ideally serve it raw like this American white shrimp we have in mind with this guy, so what? we'll do it, just grab the head with one hand, grab the tail with the other hand and you're just going to twist it. I have a shrimp for Vayner, flatten the shrimp in your hand and spread it out, you're going to do everything. along the top layer of the shrimp and then comes out just before the tail and now with our hands we can go in and remove it segment by segment.

You can choose to leave the tail fins on or just feel them right now. What you're going to do is run the knife right along the top of the shrimp, gently exposing where the intestinal tract will be, making sure there's nothing there and there you'll have some peeled and deveined shrimp, prawns, prawns and shrimp, theVery similar prawns have an extra set of tweezers right in the front we are going to peel the vein and today we are going to go one step further and I will also show you how to make butterflies on the prawns, the first thing we are going to do is remove the head by holding on head and tail separately and just twisting for the shrimp tail, we're going to use our D Boehner, we're going to go right to the top of the shell and follow it all the way down, then with our hands.

We'll just go back and peel everything off and use our tool to open up the tail and remove that as well. Now you'll see the intestinal tract and other organs here and we'll just use our hands to just make sure we get them all out and now that we've cleaned it up, take the sharp part of our shrimp knife here and right where the intestinal tract was, we're going to follow that line having Be careful not to cut off the entire bottom of the tip. Now, once you've opened it, you can cut a little. on one side, a little bit, on the other side, just very shallow cuts here until the tip is flat and that's how you butterfly a prawn.

Butterflyed prawns are particularly good even for quick cooking, but they certainly lend themselves well to grilling in the shell - you can grill them. baking them steaming them is just a great product to work with scallops live scallops for bivalves, which essentially means that they have two shells, one top and one bottom, that are joined right at the end with a hinge. Locate the top shell which will always be more rounded the bottom will always be a little flatter enter the scallop from the back show not the top I like to stay on my scallop up at the hinge locate where the gap is use my knife to make I wedge it open and use my fingers to hold it there.

I'll stick my flexible knife under the eyes. I'll peel them back slightly. I will locate the mussel and hold very tight against the back shell. I'm going slowly. I'll just move my knife down until it opens. that muscle, this lip on the outside is actually where they have a lot of eyes, you don't want to eat any of that, you're going to peel back, the eyes hold that membrane and you just pull everything out, so now you're on the left with the main muscle attached to the bottom layer, the muscles are always on one side of the scallop a little more than the other, so you should get closer to that closer side using something flexible in a swooping motion, press down with enough force with the knife and the scallop will slide out and then you will have a live scallop.

Duxbury Oyster. There are many different types of voices. Generally speaking, there is a way to surprise them. You have a flat side and then you have a cup that holds the meat. You're going to want to lower the cup onto your cutting board and get a good grip on it and you'll see there's a hinge here with a little gap, take your paring knife and stick it in that gap to get a little bit deeper, you're going to want to apply a little bit of pressure. going in this direction towards the front of the oyster while also moving it, but you don't want to press so hard that if you slip you will have a serious accident, there is no rush with this.

You'll feel it and once the knife is caught in the oyster, give it another small movement just to open the oyster slightly, take the knife out and approach this side closest to you with just the tip of the knife. moving and staying very tight on that top layer until you cut the first muscle that holds here, you will do the same on the other side, you should have a pretty clean moisture, there is one more muscle down here that also holds the meat on the bottom half of the shell, so you'll have to be careful not to spill too much juice and you'll just release that side and voila, you'll have a shucked oyster ready to go.

East coast oysters are definitely a lot of people's favorite, especially here on the east coast they have a higher salinity, they are saltier, so that will equate to more salt in the flavor of the oyster bay water sweets. . These come from the west coast of Washington State, as always, the shells of these cans. They're a bit fragile, so you'll need to be extra careful, and their hinges are sometimes covered by extra pieces of shell that move around until you start to feel like you're about to go in and just explode. Released there, you have a chance at a West Coast oyster.

You could definitely crush a dozen of the easily European flats, also sometimes known as Boleyn Easters. The first step for this is to remove the band so that you find the hinge right where the two shells connect, but just don't stop moving, don't stop pressing and you will feel it start to move a little more until you get that pop, release that hinge. I'm doing my best, let's keep the oysters flat and my palm as much as possible so it doesn't escape. all those juices three in the bottom muscle and there you have a shucked European oyster.

I don't like these oysters now we can't try them, yeah okay, it's like licking a battery. Prince Edward Island Mussels, these mussels come from Prince Edward Island. off the east coast of Canada, one important thing: if it's alive, it should be tightly closed or if it's a little open, as soon as you touch it, hit it, squeeze it or something, it should close itself. Inside the muscle there will probably be some sand, so definitely take at least an hour to purge your muscles and give them time to release that sand. Your next step will be to essentially remove the beard from the mussel. which is what the mussel uses to stick to rocks or if they are grown on the ropes they hang from, you will find it on the flat end of the mussel, it looks like hairs that you will want to grab.

Once you have the beard exposed a little bit more, you're going to pinch it between your two fingers, you're going to really focus on the movement, movement, movement and then it just comes out and your mussels are ready to cook hard clams depending on where you're from, you'll call them otherwise a small neck an earl neck a cocktail clam some people will call this a top neck a cherry pit at the end of the day They are all hard shell clams you will absolutely need a clam knife on one side of the back of the night, a totally flat super thin blade and a slightly sharp edge that helps it slide easily into the clam.

I like to check the edge of the clam. find the little gap inside it, put my knife on that hinge, squeeze and wiggle a little until you find that opening, it's going to want to be closed tight so you're just going to open it slightly once you have that gap ready. You'll get in through the sides by simply scraping the top of the clam. Cut one of the muscles that support it on that side. You will do exactly the same on the other side. Stay very tight against that top shell until you feel that pop. once you do that, you're going to scrape the top layer until it pops open, separate it from a bottom hinge here, a bottom hinge on this side, release that meat and you've got yourself an impacted clam.

I think they can handle a scrambled soft shell clam. also known as a steamed clam, we're just going to want to do a really quick blanch, basically just a flash in the water and in an ice bath, basically we just want to get the clam to separate from the shell and make it really easy to work with. So after blanching them you will see that the clam has opened. These clams sink deep into the ground. This portion here, the siphon or neck, is what actually comes out of the sand to retrieve water and food, so we'll start with that face. facing up, facing the clam towards you with your clam knife, you will only rub the sides and just make sure the clam is completely separated from the shell and that they fall off immediately after a quick blanch.

You can see an additional membrane here. Take it off the siphon part, you'll see a set of gills here, a couple more organs, so we can peel them all off with our clam knife and for the neck, we can just scrape the dark bits off of both. sides, you'll want to make sure there's no sand or sand stuck in the siphon, cut it lightly in half, just take a look inside, give it a quick scrape once you've cleaned everything out, the clam is out and trimmed, this is done. for your soup, it's ready to fry, it's ready to eat razor clams, the meat is very delicate with these razor clams, so when I make razor clams I like to use a blunt object, nothing too sharp, so I'll take an offset spatula, again there's a top shell on the bottom shell, find the gap, you'll see a little bit of meat attached to the membrane on the top shell, same thing on the side shell, get in real tight on that top shell and just start peeling off the membrane, making sure to take its time to get it all off once it's that size, flip it over, we can do the exact same thing on the other side once it's open, the top cover should just peel off, scrape off anything that's stuck, you've got the foot, You have the siphon and when you turn it, I will see the belly and the intestinal tract of the clam.

I'm going to grab a small knife and we're just going to trim off the belly, the foot, just the toughest, nastiest parts, so you don't necessarily want to eat them. From time to time there is Sand grits inside the siphon, straighten it out as best you can and using a sharp knife, without cutting completely, just be very gentle to open the siphon. ​​You can see that it is quite clean. I'll rinse it off a little bit, which I like. make only very thin razor clam slices. I think they have a really beautiful sweet flavor. Gently browning in a pan is great, but raw is the way to go.

Sticky duck. The GUI Duck is definitely one of the most unique looking shells for something that we're going to be working with today, this is a West Coast

shellfish

, it's the largest burrowing clam, highly sought after and well known in the sushi community. The first steps when looking to prepare a sticky duck, you will need to purge it, basically. We will soak it in salt water for at least an hour. Your next step will be to quickly blanch it in some boiling water for 15 seconds directly into an ice bath. This will allow the sticky duck to separate from the shell and also allow us to remove it.

Any extra membrane may be tough and make the sticky duck difficult to prepare, so let's blanch it now. Our sticky duck is now bleached and we will point out the opening of the shell. against that shell and really just follow that line, you have to be very careful not to pierce the actual meat of the sticky duck, once that side is free you can do the exact same thing on the other side until everything is free on this little part . here this is your sticky duck out of the shell there are some parts here that we're not going to want to eat this siphon has a membrane on top so it connects from the bottom from the bottom you're just going to loosen it up a little bit of the excess and just start peeling it off in this rounded area, you'll have the stomach in the belly, so we'll take it out and you can see it's hanging down, we'll just go in and go. down like this and we will do the same on the other side.

This will be pretty much broken down into these sections. Here we're going to want to open this trap just to make sure there's no sand or grit or anything. So, making sure to make shallow cuts enough to open it. I don't want to cut it directly in half. Is there. We can see some sand and just scoop it out and we have some extra organs. here we're going to want to clean so gently with the tip of your knife, we're going to run it right along the edges, it's hollow right behind it, so your knife is going to slide if you're not careful, same thing to the other side and just we'll peel and trim the edges there.

You'll notice some discoloration on the siphon here as you work with the product from start to finish, so if we put a little bit of salt in there. here and some water. In fact, I'm going to use that salt to scrub the outside, rinse off the excess salt and you can already see the color is starting to lighten, just slice it very thin, enjoy it raw, it's just a clam, no. let their appearance stop you from choosing one if you see them cockles cockles have been described as more complex than hard shell clams, they simply have an extra level of flavor and an extra level of umami, an extra level of ocean goodness similar to an oyster, we're going to go where the hinge attaches and we're just going to move, just move until you feel that pop, it just happened, you're going to run the knife real hard along the top cover, do it on both sides, you're going to release a bit. of meat at the bottom there you will do the same by cutting the muscle that joins the cockle there you have a shelled cockle abalone abalone is a type of sea snail that is very well known and sought after for its very white and firm meat that can be quite expensive and also for its beautiful mother of pearl shells, a really beautiful creature, so to prepare an abalone, what I like to do is take a special offset object, a blunt object, and just go around the sides of the shell and start releasing.

Climb the meat under that membrane as best you can until it is free of the shell, so that when you pull the abalone out of the shell you will see an impressive array of colors oninside the shell and you'll be able to see a hot mess of a seafood in front of you and we'll show you how to clean it now the white meat here is what you're going to want to get to there are some organs around it they all just come off and just by hand start to peel off extra stuff here, I mean, this meat is really, really firm, really beautiful, look, a quick little rinse just to get some of this extra stuff off, so using a small paring knife, I'm basically going to start trimming a little more.

The black parts should come off if you just scrape them off. It is an abalone shell peeled, cleaned and trimmed. This is a type of sea snail. They actually live for twenty to thirty years, so they get quite large as they age. They actually grow with their shell, so first. If you want to identify your crown spikes, they will have a larger one here, something a little smaller, and then a small one around the spiral. What you will have to do is make a hole in the shell between the second and third hole you want. To tap this gap a little bit from here, I'm going to use my offset spatula over one edge and I'm just going to go along the top of the shell and just run the spatula along that shell just to release the snail from the inside. , so take your time, don't force it, just going at all the different angles. there we go, you're going to grab that foot and you're going to start pulling it out down here, this is a hard shell, you're just going to trim it off, you just want to trim away any kind of dark stuff that's in there.

On the left, it's a very nice, firm piece of seafood that lends itself very well to slicing very, very thinly. I mean, it's great for sashimi, but I suggest almost all seafood be tried raw at least once and that's how conch is prepared on the west coast. sea ​​urchin, so the Pact Pines, this is essentially their defense mechanism, it's the way they move, it's the way they capture the food they will get, they have a set of extremely delicious ro sacs inside them which most people will know as Unni, you want to be. Be very careful not to prick yourself with the spines when handling them, turn them gently, that is the hedgehog's mouth.

I like to use a small paring knife for this and we're going to go around where the mouth is and free it up for us so we can get our scissors in a good amount of liquid will do and again I'm not going to go too deep you just want it to be enough so that is free, we're going to take a bowl and we're just going to throw it away. If you take out any liquid, we're going to throw all that away. If you look closely, there are some splits in the way the hedgehog is set up.

You want to take a pair of scissors and get in between one of those sections and just do it. one cut we can make another one on the other side and we're just looking to join these two cuts together and just start trimming them, they just peel off, you can already see the beautiful bright orange row that's starting to be exposed. This is all in the way, so let's get rid of it. You can just shake it, you can use your finger. I like to use a small offset spatula and free up anything that's getting stuck while being super mindful. of those really delicate rose acts that you don't want to disturb, you can really start to see them now, take a skimmer where the RO sac was attached to that top layer, you'll go in on the tip of your spoon and pretty much just start. you take them out and they pretty much hug the side of the hedgehog, so you just want to follow the same shape that the hedgehog naturally has, you're going to take the RO bags and the spatula and my spoon, you're just going to gently drop them into the water and go in there. your hand shake them a little bit, very gently, just to remove any of those extra organs that are there, you're ready to enjoy one of the most delicious things about sea urchin eggs, you can just put them in your hand like this and just the East coast super close sea urchin looks very different than the west coast variety but the procedure is still exactly the same, roll it onto its back just using the tip of my knife and we'll just dump out all the excess liquid. and sea water and we'll take out the beak, we're going to go in straight, we'll do the same on the opposite side and then we'll start or airway removing the bottom section.

I'm not going to go deeper. Hurrying up, let's dump out any excess liquid that's in here again, oh boy, it's already full, they want to get out of the hedgehog, remove any of those extra organs that are stuck in there, submerge this in water and it will start to recover these sex. It's really gorgeous sea urchin roe from the east coast, nothing beats an urchin, honestly this is great, so I hope today took some of the fear out of bringing home live seafood. It takes a little practice, don't be afraid to prepare them. mistakes, besides requiring new skills for your culinary tool belt, just take your time and appreciate what you have in front of you and appreciate all that the ocean has to offer.