A Chesapeake Bay crab feast is one of America’s messiest meals. Hard-shelled blue crabs, steamed in a kaleidoscope of spice, are presented as a great pile dumped onto a tablecloth that is disposable brown paper or several layers of newsprint. It is the eater’s job to retrieve the meat by using pick and mallet (and stacks of napkins or, more conveniently, rolls of paper towels).
Getting the meat from hard-shelled crabs can be even more difficult than working on a lobster, so here, briefly, are the steps you need to know:
1. Twist off the legs and claws. Crack the claws and pick out the meat, which should come out in one or a few big hunks. There may be a small amount of meat in the legs, but you will have to crack them and dig to get it out.
2. Pull up the apron on the underside of the crab and pull the shell off. Remove the gills and, unless you are a liver-lover, scrape away the greenish-yellow stuff.
3. Snap the body half, revealing large lodes of meat, easily extractable using only fingers. Beyond the big chunks, smaller cavities contain meat that can be gotten with a pick or knife.
Pitchers of beer are needed to slake thirst induced by all the digging as well as by the spice.