When my mom asks, “Hey, Joe, can you get me some crabs?” I’m on it! I don’t know how many people can say this, but catching crabs for my mom is the best way I can show my love. I grab leftover chicken (there’s always a leftover chicken somewhere in my life) or a fish carcass (ditto!) and call my buddy August Goulet, and we rent a boat to go handline crabbing for blue crabs down at the Jersey Shore. And I always come back with a bushel for her. But the part that really shows my big love for her is she makes me take the shell off and clean the guts! That’s sacrilege to me! I love the guts and the layer of fat, called the “mustard”—it’s the most flavorful part, but still, she makes me clean it. As a chef, this is hard. But as a son, I am all in. (By the way, she has no idea what I may have gone through to get those crabs—I often get bit, and then she wants me to wash all the flavor out?)
But I have to admit, she has a way with cooking crabs that I adore. Two ways, actually. And here they are: The first, in a large aluminum pan, lay down a dozen crabs, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with diced garlic, and season with Old Bay seasoning (or use my Seafood Spice Mix, page 173). Stick a nugget of butter right into the cavity of each of the crabs, place the pan on a very hot outdoor grill, and close the lid. Give it 30 minutes, and they are done. And delicious.
Now, second, we gotta talk about crab gravy. Prepare a large pot of Simple Marinara (page 106), add 1 cup [240 ml] of red wine, slowly drop in 6 fresh crabs, add a generous pinch of red pepper flakes, and simmer over low heat for at least 45 minutes. This marinara is now called Crab Gravy. My mom likes it over spaghetti with freshly grated pecorino (yes, cheese on crab gravy spaghetti. Just do it!) and a cold beer.
I love catching crabs so much that I developed a technique for all of you aspiring handline crabbers out there: Make sure you are in shallow, brackish water and use two anchors (most people use one) and anchor the boat perpendicular to the current, creating six to eight lanes. Crabs scurry sideways and they have all those legs to hold on to the ocean floor when they don’t want to move, but when they swim, they just float with the flow. One anchor provides two lanes, on either side of the boat. But if you have two anchors, positioned perpendicular, you can create six to eight lanes, which means you have a better chance of catching those crabs! Go get ’em!
A Loosey-Goosey Recipe from a Guy Who Knows Crab Boils (Me!)
Take the biggest pot you can get your hands on and fill it with 3 in [7.5 cm] of water. Add peeled corncobs, potatoes, onions, halved whole garlic cloves (a bunch of them), and lemons (a couple of them), put it on your stove, put the lid on it, and bring it to a boil for a good 5 to 8 minutes. Now it’s time to layer your live, large Jimmy crabs in, and with each stack of crabs you place in there, dump some Old Bay seasoning on them. Continue to stack crabs and dump Old Bay, stack crabs and dump Old Bay, all the way to the top of the pot. Cover with a lid and forget about them for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a separate small saucepan, add a stick of butter, a couple of garlic cloves, and some more Old Bay and cook it until the butter melts and begins to boil and the garlic softens. When the top crab turns red, open a can of beer and pour it over the top, letting all that seasoning wash off the crabs and fall to the bottom of the pot. Take the crabs out and serve this one-pot crab boil off paper plates with the corn, potatoes, and roasted garlic and your Old Bay garlic butter on the side. I love to reveal the sweetest, largest lump of crabmeat (hint: It’s behind the flipper fins in the back) and dip it in that seasoned butter for hours and hours until I pass out. Have I said too much?