I Ate An Entire Maryland Blue Crab (including the shell)!!

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How creepy in this video, oh it's huge, you'll discover the awesome

crab

industry at work in the US and I'll try to eat a whole

crab

shell

and everything. I have never eaten a whole crab like this and every bite is magical first. Let's back up: Our seafood journey across the East Coast continues as we leave New York City's massive Fton Fish Market and head south to Maryland, here

blue

crabs are a point of pride and great part of the culinary identity of this state. You can eat crab cakes all year round. but if your friend likes you, he will have a crab feast with you.

These icy waters promote fat growth in the crabs, resulting in a rich, decadent bite, but getting those decadent crabs is not that easy, ah, just kidding, my finger was never on Ah, today I'm on a mission to follow The journey of a Maryland

blue

crab from the FL ocean. Do you know anyone who has ever lost a finger? Very close to the processing facility. How do you know if there are any

shell

s there? You have like an x-ray and its final destination is served in a sandwich with legs in a disturbing place. This is Behemoth, here it has legs sticking out.

I love it and it all starts right here, in the water, now when I was first told I was going to encounter crabs. I imagined that. Turns out they're normal humans who catch crabs, but that's cool too. We'll get on CJ's boat in a moment, just off the coast. Here you have more than 1,500 pots. Ready to catch the crabs, let's pick them up and see what we find now. We are jumping aboard the floating boat known as Miss Paula with CJ, a veteran crab fisherman with 26 years of experience. His daily routine revolves around setting up hundreds of traps and waiting for the crabs to arrive. better next to him Luke mcfadin, a young man with only eight years in the crabs game Luke, nice to meet you CJ, how many days a week are we here, so I use equipment usually four to five days a week, the Crabs don't take a day? free, do you take a day off?

Me, we're working in deeper water because this is the best time to go crabbing in Maryland. These crabs are moving to deeper waters to hibernate for the winter. Blue crabs are native to the waters of the western Atlantic Ocean. and the Gulf of Mexico and more and 1/3 of the US blue crab comes from the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the country, here the interaction of salt and fresh water creates ideal conditions for the animals that We search every year during the peak. season from April to the end of November crabbers like CJ and Luke do everything they can to cash in on the boom two crabs pick up a trap and shake it the crabs fall out add some bait and then they'll move to the side like lobsters In Maine , crabs here are caught using traps, also called pots.

These pots are designed to make it easy for the crabs to enter and not so easy for them to escape. A box or bag of bait is placed inside the trap to attract these crabs. picky eaters want fresh chicken necks they want fresh fish they want bass chicken necks it's part of their natural diet it makes sense up to 25 traps are submerged in the water and connected to a line it's like a free meal for the crabs but with a little bit of catch and a catch is exactly what we're looking for look at the crab I thought here we go oh my god this thing is gigantic holy cow look at this guy oh you have to hold him like this if your fingers are too low he'll catch you sometime they'll pinch everything the weather every day.

You know, I've seen so much seafood around the world, mainly in Asia, and I've seen so little in my own country, and just the shape of the carrus how it closes like some kind of ancient Mongolian warrior wearing a helmet the claws the colors are really beautiful it's a male or a female it's a male crab you can tell it looks like the Washington Monument the females I have the capital Dome honestly that's the G version it just looks like a penis that's what I'm saying the Washington Monument and the show for children of the Dome capital on a good day this time of year how many crabs you are taking is more than a couple less More than a few, for tax reasons, it doesn't mean how many, unlike other fisheries negatively affected by climate change, the Blue crabs are throwing a party in the warmer waters with better breeding conditions at all, but the crabbers still need to play. okay with regulations to keep crab sustainable long term in

maryland

everything is regulated at the beginning of the season it is a 5 inch male crab limit a smaller crab of 5 and 4 ines at this time it is not legal unless it is a peeler crab. you just have to have 3 and 1/2 on it which is a peeler crab which means it's about to molt yeah so it'll show a sign on your second swim pin that that crab is going to be molting in a couple of days once the unqualified crab is verified a VIP ticket back to the bottom of the ocean.

The peeler crabs are taken to CJ's own processing facility, which will soon see what it's like. Such spooky larger vessels hit the market as the big fish are sold whole and ready to impress, while the more humble-sized crabs are sent to a processing facility where their meat is extracted Chesapeake Brand Seafood ships about 6,000 crabs to containers filled with oceanic chalk. Delicious every day, the first piles of crabs are cooked thoroughly once boiled, the succulent treasure they contain meticulously extracted by the hands of expert collectors. Finally the meat morsels are sorted by grade, then packaged and shipped and prepared to embark on a gastronomic journey across the United States.

But if you find yourself in the crab utopia that is Maryland, it would be a culinary transgression not to savor the state's quintessential crab. cake and what better way to elevate the experience than enjoying it on a boat with the captain let me tell you a sad story when I was 22 I had almost no money I went to the Rainforest Café it's an independent restaurant I'm not sure If you've heard of it I ordered cakes of crab and then I paid, I don't know, $25, it was a lot of money back then and it was just a little disk of bread maybe shaped like a crab, I'm not.

I'm even sure that if some crab meat made it into the cake, then this is the opposite, it's big, beautiful, full of big pieces that you can actually see. These are the best crab cakes. I think I've seen crab cakes. They are full of flour and fillings or they are made well Maryland crab cakes are not a lot of fillings, let CJ show you how to make the base mixture first, we are going to add the crab cake mixture J, you will want exactly half cup of mayonnaise perfect like a little hot sauce like a little mustard we wash Shire sauce a little parsley for health now the main course here we are using Maryland jumbo crab meat, the best in the world once the burgers are forged by your exacting standards, they're ready for the flat top it's big and heavy guys let's dig in oh man oh delicious big chunks of seasoning and when it's heated like this it really brings out the flavor of the crab.

I'm getting some mayonnaise. I'm getting the seasoning. a little bit of work, how do you say? the worst, the worst aister Shire, that sauce is there too, but it all plays wonderfully with the crab, the crab meat itself is super tender, it's almost like a fat, what do you think it could do? I'm no happier, I'm very curious to know where this crab ends up because when you talk about something like lobster, it's a premium product, it's something that everyone wants and that's why people are taking the time and effort to ship it all over the country and all over the world, but when it comes to blue crab, I know the meat can get everywhere, but the crabs themselves, the fresh animal, the creature even while it's still alive, where is that? of crabs caught in Maryland at ches Peake Bay?

Probably 90 or 95% of them are eaten in Maryland and they don't leave because the demand is so high, so we actually ship a lot of their crabs Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, a lot of their crabs also come to Maryland, so Maryland is really the live blue crab eating capital of the world. What is it about these blue crabs that people love so much? It really is in many ways like the heart and soul of Maryland. It's like when you come to Maryland you have to try a crab cake. If your friend likes you, they will have it. a crab feast with you m if you come to Maryland and can't experience a crab feast you need better friends yes get better friends when it comes to tiny crabs like these the task of breaking their shells every minute.

A bite of meat can be tedious. I have tried opening small crabs. My claws come out when I reach the body. I'm just giving up, but what if I told you that CJ has found a solution? Now we head to his house where I'll eat a whole crab,

including

the shell, poor thing is probably how I feel. All. CJ's house is like a crab lab, a crab lab with cages stacked high and each corner serving as a different workshop for his crab experiments. real treasures lie hidden inside your garage CJ right now we are in your spooky crab lab this is where the magic happens we bring in the peelers the crabs that are very close to molting or molting their shells we put them here and then when they molt you take them off the shell and become soft crabs.

You help them out of the shell right into the frying pan. The best eating crab you will ever get. That's what we sell as a soft crab that would be eaten whole. A crab doesn't grow. the shell rather molds itself, detaches itself from the old skeleton, squeezes its way out, and then forms a new one in life. a blue crab is molded about 20 times. this crab came off last night and you can see here the crab can't even hold its claws it's so soft. who is just hanging out, this is the most valuable crab to me, these soft ones can sell for more than double the price of a typical hard shell, which is why CJ goes through the tedious process of sitting the crab, which It feels so creepy, it's chewy, I've never done it.

I touched a crab like this, oh poor thing, it's looking at me like a man, if I had stiffness in my claws I'd bite your finger, but you can, wow, it's new to me, it's really cool to see it in this case. you're going to eat the whole crab the claws the shell the carrus everything is like that yes she eats everything we cut off the devil's face and eyes and then the apron well I don't want him to look at me yes I won't look at you CJ's approach to cooking soft shell crabs is pure simplicity, treating it like a prime filet in a hot pan, it goes with butter and a touch of seasoning Jo, this is the main event, but before you sink your teeth into it. that we're cooking a whole crab, just throw today's catch into a giant steamer, sprinkle with a pinch of Joo seasoning.

Let the fire kick in and you'll know it's time to feast when those crabs turn a vibrant shade of red this one Reminds me of what I experienced down south when I went to Alabama and they had boiled crabs and they just had a giant bowl full with 10,000 crabs and they put them all over the table. It's like your version ofthat, perhaps. that's your version of this, yeah, cheers because this is a classic Maryland summer scene right here is a PA Krabs, let's do it with a friend, let's get into it. I like to start with the claws.

What is the strategy here? I'll just try to break it down, you know, on the table like that, oh that worked, wow, this meat looks amazing, it's a dark, delicious, juicy sweet, that prison seasoning tastes like pepper or tastes like cayenne, that's very Well now, if I want to enter this body, how would I do it? Okay, pick the apron, grab the Washington Monument, yeah, and then you're going to remove the top shell right there, which is actually an undeveloped shell, so the crab will be molting in the near future. You can eat it and that's good. oh yeah it's really good, a completely different experience, it's griny, salty, super oily and even a touch bitter depending on what's plugged in there, so this is the hard shell crab, this is something I find a bit more familiar although I haven't tried it. with the seasoning or done this way it's amazing but then the soft shell crab, a crab that just molted yesterday, is basically the softest the meat can be, it still has that leathery feel on the outside it's still pliable it's very disconcerting it has legs but tempting at the same time regards it was very different from crab cakes or hard crabs it's so different that the legs have their own flavor the body itself, this is wild, this is one of the most delicious ones I've ever had on my face.

I understand why you have a super creepy garage. What's also wild is that if you eat a hard shell crab like this, I mean the real thing. There isn't much left at the farm compared to eating the whole soft shell crab and every bite is magical, it's juicy. I know it sounds weird, but it's almost like a sausage casing. You know, yeah, that's a great way to explain it because you drink. one bite, the skin gets a little tight on the outside and the teeth open up to get to that juicy core inside, they are delicious, must be one of the best things to eat to come out of this bay, sure, how often do you ?

If you do something like this, this is all potential profit right here. I can't afford to eat my crabs, I can hide, don't get high on your own supply of crabs. CJ soft show crabs become more valuable when sold in restaurants where they can go. in culinary gold like here at Ocean Odyssey Crab House, a seafood restaurant that combines a love of seafood with a sense of adventure with its sandwich known as Bay on a bun. The unique thing about this sandwich is that it sums up the best things the Bay has to offer. To offer crabs, oysters and fish first, we will dredge the fish with a little beaten egg and our seasoned flour, then the same with the soft crab and oysters, we will go straight to the flour, all treated with a good, long fiscal year.

It's time to build so we start our toasted bun with a bed of mixed greens and pile on the catfish followed by the tender crab and the oysters with sauce so this is a tomao aoli ​​and cheerful pink sauce and that's how it goes makes the bay in the bun this is a huge leviathan it has legs that stick out I love to join me Travis, co-owner of Ocean Odyssey, if I'm not mistaken, this is your creation, yes, it's not just the soft shell that contains we have fish, we have oysters all in the bay inside this bun let's go for it m oh yeah that's a completely different experience so yesterday I had a soft shell crab that had just molted the night before and then it was in the pan. seared and was soft, tender and juicy.

I would compare it to a Johnsonville BR sharp cheddar that was half stuffed with crab meat, that's my white trash comparison, but this is all fried so it changes the texture a little, you sure get that extra crunch, it's chewy . to know at the moment what you are chewing there are some more chewy bites that I think must be the oyster there are some very hot pieces that I think must be the fish because it keeps all that heat but that crab still has that skin on the outside it's partly crunchy and partly like the skin of a sausage that breaks apart when you chew it exactly, plus you have a nice creamy sauce putting it all together and a little bit of vegetables that you know for their fiber, that's right, I guess you need some vitamins in there.

Tell me about being a seasonal restaurant because this is something new for me and something that seems unexpected for the US because if someone has a successful business, people abroad wonder why they're not a franchise yet, what? why don't you have it? five locations, why not work 100 hours a week while closing the doors each winter? We are a crab house, that's a big part of who we are. You know, crab season is from April to sometimes December, November, that's the harvest season, so if they're in the Chesapeake Bay we have them, if not, if they're moving, which they do or if It's winter and they're buried in the mud, we enter Nation simply Like crabs, what begins as a small, slinking wonder of nature transforms into an inexhaustible resource that leaves an indelible mark on the state of Maryland, the Blue crab is not only a piece of cultural heritage that attracts tourists eager to savor the state's distinctive features.

Seafood, but it also serves as an economic gold mine for hard-working locals. They've both been doing this for a good amount of time and a lot of people just see the finished product, whether it's in the store or a restaurant, but they don't do it. I actually have access to the first step of the source of these ingredients, so for you, what would you say are the biggest challenges that you and other crabs face? Our profit margin has shrunk in the last 20 years since I started doing it because everything has increased exponentially, but the price of crabs has only increased a little slowly.

I agree, I mean, what you really know is how much money you can get for what you can fish, because with a lot of the new regulations coming into play, you're going to hit the limits here over time, so the approach that I've adopted is a little different than most kids. I really just wanted to sell more catches you know so I catch all mine as CJ but I sell all mine directly to the customer for You both have had this journey in online social media where do you expect it to end like I always say something to for my grandchildren to see it?

In the future they will know what I did. I just saw social media as a really, really good way to build a customer base, but it also gives insight into who catches your food, how your food actually gets from where it is to the table, and it closes that kind of gap because It's something that people have no idea about. They know and don't realize that, like in the United States, there is still a healthy, sustainable and really strong commercial fishing fleet. You know, most people think that a fisherman is people who just want to take, take, take and leave nothing behind, but for us we depend on the resource, so we are the ones who are most interested in finding ways to make sure so that we can go to work and feed our families.

If you love Indian food, then you will love our new channel, Best Indian Food. Subscribe now. for weekly videos showcasing the most unique street food across the country, this one has given up, it's no longer fighting. I can handle it though, no, I'm just kidding. It's okay, I definitely won't want to get bitten. I'll try. Just kidding, my finger was never there, ha, I put it all in the intro, so the average person here in a day, how many crabs do you think they're going through, probably between six bushel, no one knows what bushel it is except for you, okay, there are 60 crabs in a bushel.

Okay, so you gave me an SAT math problem. Yes, if Andre has six bushel and each bushel has 60 crabs 480, then that's almost 500 crabs a day while you eat the crabs. You're going to have more and more seasoning on your hands, so you're going to transfer it with the meat to your face, yes face, I lost my train of thought, I'm sorry, you're doing great, the main dish here we're using giant chunks , oh boy. Yes, I knew it was going to go wrong. Can we start from the beginning? Well, how do you know if someone is productive enough?

It's a genuine question. It's a magic place. You know Santa has his little elves making toys, but I'd rather go. to this kind of workshop where you can walk out with a big tub of crab meat, it's a beautiful thing. CJ, you said earlier that this crab, the Maryland crab, is the best in the world, why do you say that? Because I caught it, okay? Luke, what? Do you think I agree? I mean, you know where it came from. You know we catch it right off our boats, right on the plate. You know what I mean.

I feel like you two might be biased. We may be a little biased. maybe boom guys, that's the end of this video and that's everything you ever wanted to know about blue crabs here in Maryland. Maryland crabs, the best crabs in the world, as V by the people of Maryland. I think they're out for us anyway. I thought it was amazing and I had one of the most unique crab experiences of my life here, having a completely soft crab seared in a pan, it was delicious. I hope you enjoyed it, guys. I want to thank everyone who participated in this video.

I had a great time, otherwise guys, that's all. Thank you very much for seeing us. See you next time. Peace, okay, walk away, all cool and casual. I'm stuck, I'm stuck, help me out.