This recipe is taken directly from Food Network — Grilled Soft-Shell Crabs, courtesy of Judy Jumonville. It’s a simple low-and-slow grill method built around a Cajun-spiced lemon butter baste, finished with a slice of tomato and a little melted mozzarella.
Soft-shell crab is one of the few seafoods where the whole point is that you’re not picking anything out of a shell. Once you understand what makes it different from a hard-shell crab, the cooking itself is fairly forgiving — this is a low-fire, baste-as-you-go method rather than a fast sear.
What Makes a Soft-Shell Crab Different
A soft-shell crab isn’t a separate species — it’s a blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) caught in the brief window right after it has molted its old, hard exoskeleton, before the new one has had time to harden. NOAA Fisheries describes the stages watermen watch for as crabs approach a molt, moving from hard-shell, to peeler, to buster, to soft-shell — a crab that has just molted and hasn’t hardened back up yet. Because that window is so short, crabs are pulled from the water right at that stage and sold whole, soft shell and all.
That timing is what changes how you eat it. With a hard-shell crab, you crack the shell and pick out the meat. A soft-shell crab skips that step almost entirely: as Wikipedia’s summary of the term puts it, the shell is soft enough that “almost the entire animal can be eaten.” The only parts removed during cleaning are the mouthparts, gills and abdominal cover — everything else, shell included, is soft enough to eat.
Ingredients
For the crabs
- 6 to 8 soft-shell crabs, cleaned (gills, eyes and mouth removed)
- Sliced tomatoes
- Mozzarella cheese
For the lemon butter sauce
- 1 pound butter
- 8 to 10 lemons, juiced
- 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- Salt, to taste
Method
- Make the lemon butter sauce: combine the melted butter with the lemon juice, Cajun seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and salt, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, adjusting seasoning to taste.
- Have your fishmonger clean the crabs, or do it yourself by removing the gills and cutting off the eyes and mouth.
- Set the crabs on a pan or a sheet of aluminum foil and place them on the grill over a low fire.
- Baste the crabs generously with the lemon butter sauce, then cook for 5 to 6 minutes per side, continuing to baste as they cook.
- Just before serving, top each crab with a slice of tomato and a small amount of mozzarella, and leave it on the heat only long enough for the cheese to melt.
- Remove from the grill and serve immediately.
Checking for Doneness Safely
The original recipe is timed rather than described visually — 5 to 6 minutes per side over a low fire. The FDA’s guidance for crab is that the flesh should be firm, pearly and opaque throughout, or, measured with a thermometer, cooked to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C). Soft-shell crabs are thin enough that this is rarely an issue at 5 to 6 minutes per side over live heat, but if your fire is running cooler than expected, check that the body meat has gone from translucent to opaque before pulling them off.
A Few Practical Notes
Buy soft-shell crabs live or already cleaned and ask your fishmonger about timing — they’re genuinely seasonal, sold mostly from spring into early fall while blue crabs are molting, and they don’t keep well, so plan to cook them within a day of buying. If you’re cleaning them yourself, do it right before cooking rather than ahead of time.
Keep the fire low and resist the urge to rush this one. Because the whole crab is going on the heat rather than just a fillet, a hotter fire risks scorching the legs and thin shell edges before the body is cooked through, which is exactly why this recipe calls for a low fire and frequent basting instead of a hard sear.
Keep reading
- Weber’s Grilled Swordfish with Jalapeño-Mint Butter
- Grilled Lobster Tails with Basil-Lemon Butter
- Bobby Flay’s Skewered Sea Scallops with Lemon-Fennel
- Taste of Home’s Cajun Seafood Boil in Foil