How to Boil Blue Crabs

[Music Playing] Welcome to Cajun Cooking TV featuring Beryl Strokes Welcome to Cajun Cooking TV. Tonight’s Menu LA Blue Crabs In Gonzales, Louisiana Beryl: Hey Mike, what are you doing up here? Mike: To get some crabs. Beryl: What are you going to do with it Mike? Mike: No, I am going to cook them and eat them, tonight. Beryl: All right. Oh, that is a beauty! Mike: That is beauty! Beryl: That is a beauty. Mike: We will hold on from behind. If you hold them from the front, they will bite you. Beryl: Is that a boy or a girl? Mike: These are all males. Beryl: That is a boy. Mike: Males are your premium one. They got the narrow thing right there. I will show you better when we are cooking. Okay, pretty blue; let us eat the blue crabs! Beryl: We are getting ready to boil the crabs. I have two pots going. If you do not have a big pot, just do two, we have this one smaller stuff pot. And then, I have my big six quart pot. They are loaded with water, but I left about this much from the top, because after they are cooking, we are going to put some ice on top of them. So we want to leave enough room. So, just pour your water. I just got two tablespoons of salt and I am going to divide it up amongst the pots. And you could put anything, the seeds in your water. We have got some bay leaves, some sweet onion, some huge garlic pads. Here, we are just going to throw this all in whole. Of course, we have some shrimp and crab oil, some vinegar. I am going to put a little vinegar in each pots to make it peel easier, cannot forget some hot sauce and we have some chopped green onions and I will throw those in for flavor. And of course, you need either lemon or lime. Today, we are going to use some lime and I got him quarter. I will squeeze them in and we can start now. This pot is boiling. We are just going to squeeze in the lime, just like this, and actually I am just going to throw the whole thing in there. Put some salt on each one, just like that. Add up these onions, and garlic. I got some bay leaves just for extra flavor. And then I am going to toss in a bowl of green onions, and let us do the crab oil. This is the main ingredient here. We got to use the liquid, but you can also buy a powdered version. The powdered version has MSG in it, so I am not going to use that. I am putting two tablespoons in each pot. If you want a little hotter, you are welcome to put some more. And then we are going to put a tablespoon each of vinegar and this helps the meat peel much easier. We are going to put there the hot sauce, in each one. This poor little fellow is blowing bubbles, I am sorry, fellows. But you have to go in the pot. That is a big fellow right there, folks. And we get another one. And they instantly--once you put them in there, turn red. From blue to red, just a beautiful color, we will time that for eight minutes. It has been eight minutes and both of the crab pots are ready to go. I turn the fire off of each one. And we are going to load them with some ice, to stop the cooking process and then allow all the juices to soak into the crab meat. And we are going to soak them up all the seasoning for 60 minutes. See you later. Hi! We are back, it has been an hour and the crabs have been soaking up the seasoning, and they started out blue and now, there is this beautiful red color. And I am going to pull them out from the pots. Here, these are big and gorgeous. When I say these are number one crabs, so they are the bigger size, so they are full of meat. Look at these beautiful things. Well folks, I am ready to eat. This has been another episode of Cajun Cooking TV, and we will see you next time.