![]() ![]() ![]() If you try to boil them as you would a normal crab, they would just fall apart. ![]() Soft-shell crabs are best eaten golden and crisp or sauteed. You can watch the whole 8-minute video below The molting process looks a little like this. It takes a couple of days for a new shell to fully harden. In order to shed its shell, the crab forms an inner soft shell underneath, swells its body with water to break its current shell, slowly crawls out - this can take 10 minutes alone - and then begins the process of forming a new shell. They have the perfect balance of a delicate, melt in your mouth texture yet firm enough to be in top shape come your busiest hours. The softies Cooper’s is bringing in are at their peak quality for dining. Our suppliers are catching Crabs and closely monitoring them so they’re shipped at the exact ideal point of their shedding. While they’re in this stage, they are one of the tastiest treats the east coast offers. In other words, they molt, and it is this molting process that makes soft-shell crabs such a treat. In order to keep on growing, they shed their shell and make new, bigger ones. they’re most typically blue crabs - that have gotten too big for their shells. Soft-shell crabs are not a separate species of crab. If you’ve had the pleasure of eating one, you know that they hold all the flavor of your everyday crab without any of the hassle of prying meat from its sharp, thick shell - basically, it’s seafood in its most perfect state. Delicious Crabs are molting out of their old, hard shell and in a stage before their new shell has hardened. ![]() Blue Crabs off the North Carolina coast are in a shedding period. The detailed routine in harvesting a soft shell and the incredible reality of eating the entire crab, minus a few parts, makes this dish a true delicacy.It’s the best time of year for Soft Shell Crabs. Once the weather turns cold, the chance of potting a soft shell becomes less. This surprise catch fills the pots throughout the warmer months from mid-April until mid-October. At that instant, the crabber must “harvest” the crab since he only has about a 3 hour window until the crab begins to grow a new shell, which takes away from the delicacy of eating jumbo, lump, and claw meat without a shell. Biologically filtered tanks keep the “busters” healthy as they enter into the molting stage. The crabber quickly places a crab ready to molt in a tank on board the boat and transfers them into a larger tank, back at the dock. The attention to timing and how to bring the soft shell to the table requires skillful routines. Most chefs prefer a flash frozen soft shell for the cooking calendar ease. So, the small crabs get special grading to catch them in ”the act.” A crab without the hard shell takes the difficulty out of the feast. The only preparation is a “cleaning and dressing” where the inedible mouth parts, gills, and abdomen are snipped away. Young, immature crabs molt frequently to reach adult sized measurements. Soft Shells serve as a delicious delicacy!Ĭrabbers have a keen eye for crabs ready to bust out of their shells, called molting. ![]()
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