A couple weeks ago I got my hands on a pretty good size Alaskan King Crab from frozen seafood delivery, alongside with some other bounty of the sea.
For the uninitiated, king crabs are actually more related to hermit crabs than the usual blue crabs or mud crabs we used to eat. This species, the red king crab, or commonly known as Alaskan king crab is most likely caught in the Northern Pacific Ocean, and while already pretty big, they can actually grow quite a lot bigger than this particular sample.
The crab looks a little intimidating with many thorns covering entire body. However, the shells are actually quite a lot thinner and softer than mud crabs, making eating and handling pretty simple.
For cooking, I settled on this easiest and simplest, fool proof way that allows you to enjoy the crab’s true natural sweetness. It’s so easy any 3rd grader should be able to do.
Ingredients:
- one Alaskan King Crab
- 2 inches of butter
- several cloves of garlic
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 lemon
- a handful of chopped cilantro (optional)
Cooking Instructions:
- snap off the legs, open crab shell, remove gills & cut body into halves
- put 1″ butter in a claypot, garlic (together with skin), and crab, turn on high heat for 10 minutes, no water required
- separately heat up olive oil & melt the remaining butter, add lemon to the finished product, this will be your sauce
- once crab is done, sprinkle chopped cilantro to give it that awesome color
- enjoy your fancy seafood!
Alaskan King Crab recipe, the simple way
The result is an awesome fancy crab dinner that takes all of 15 minutes to prepare and cook. Now you know how to cook your own crab, enjoy!
Like what I’ve commented in your IG, I’ll cook my King Crab soon too because it is using up so much of my freezer space and I kena cucuk every time I tried to get my ingredients from freezer. >_<
Choi Yen: hahaha ya it indeed takes up too much space!
I saw this at a shop here, so tempted to buy…until a friend had one and shared the photos on Facebook. I asked him and he said our local mud crabs are nicer so in the end, I changed my mind.
suituapui: haha ya but they have a lot more meat!
I now see that the body has hardly any meat. No wonder when I eat these king crabs, I often only get served the legs! 😉 I used to watch a series on Alaskan king crab fishing (in the Bering Sea) and saw the processing plant cut off the legs, so I’m assuming they just export the legs? P/S: I see you got the same frozen seafood box as Choi Yen.
eatwhateatwhere: yaaa, not much on the body, in US they only eat the legs. P/S: correct, same place bah
Those spicy shells would put me off even trying to cook and eat that crab. Looks dangerous!
Monica: spikes make it more interesting, no pain no gain. haha.