What seems to be emerging as an annual family event is the crab boil… basically finding the largest stock pot- then buying a few crabs, corn, spot prawns, mussels, baby potatoes, clams, and sausages… spread a whack of newspaper over a picnic table to contain the impending mess, and have lots of napkins and bibs at the ready.

Seafood goes into the pot, and a few minutes later comes out onto the table where people devour food using their bare hands.  Concept is straightforward, but like everything, the attention to detail and timing is what makes for a great crab boil vs. chewing rubber.

1) Fill stock pot about halfway with water.  Toss in some sea salt and old bay seasoning.  Can add other seasoning as you like to flavor the water.  Bring it to a nice rolling boil.

2) The size of the pot and number of people will determine the amount you buy, but we found that 3 dungenous crabs, a few pounds of mussels, a few pounds of clams, and maybe a couple of pounds of prawns work out well for about 8 adults

3) buy a few pounds of baby potatoes. a pack or two of your favorite spicy sausage, and of course a few ears of corn.

4) toss in the potatoes and corn.  Grill part of the sausage on the BBQ, and toss the other part into the pot.

5) Make sure the seafood is nice and chilled beforehand.  This makes the crab docile and easier to handle.  There was a recent study about whether shellfish feel pain, and up to now, the thinking was that they did not.  Crabs and other shellfish have been put to death in countless ways- the cleaver method, the chopstick method, boiled alive- all of which doesn’t sound too humane.

For me, I’ve never had to kill a crab before, so I was contemplating how to best go about this.  I read that you can chill them down so they are docile, and then toss them into boiling water.  The shock will kill them “instantly”… so when the water was really boiling, I took them out of the cooler and into the pot they went.  Of course there was some thrashing, so I kept apologizing for those few seconds.  Crab should be boiled for about 7 min per pound, so if you have a bunch of 2 pound crabs, boil all of them for about 14 minutes.

6) Clams and mussels take about 4-5 minutes.  They may need some scrubbing beforehand.  Some recommend that you put them into cold salty water so they spit out any sand or ??  which means you don’t have to eat whatever they spat out.

7) Prawns are about 3-4 minutes for small/medium, 5-7 minutes for the big ones.  Of course, these are the live ones with head on.  Boy these things can kick around!

I kept a stop watch handy to keep track of everything.  The problem is when you toss something in, the water stops boiling and takes a few moments to come back to a boil.  For timing, you’re supposed to start the timer when the water comes back to a boil.  I didn’t, and the results seemed fine.

Anyways, time everything so that they are done at the same time.  If you want, you can immerse the crab in cold water to stop the cooking process, but I just let them sit on a plate for a few minutes to cool down.  I guess the extra time may have compensated for starting the timer when the crabs went in rather than when the water came back to a boil.

If there are any mussels/clams that failed to open, they get tossed.

Basically everything gets poured onto the biggest platters/bowls we have, along with a few extra bowls for shells, prawn heads, etc.

We try to buy the crabs with a missing limb, that way they are cheaper (anywhere from 4.99 to 6.99 per pound).  The prawns by far are the most expensive at around 22 per pound, but they sure are tasty!

Update- so with the crab, another way to time is by tossing them into rapidly boiling water, and pulling them out after 10 minutes.