Classic Soft-Shell Crabs

Name: Classic Soft-Shell Crabs
Yield: serves 4 to 6
Ingredients: 2 cups whole milk; Coarse salt and freshly ground white pepper; 4 to 6 soft-shell crabs, cleaned and patted dry (see page 147); 1 cup all-purpose flour; 2 tablespoons canola oil, plus more if needed; 2 tablespoons clarified butter (see below); 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into bits; Juice of 1/2 lemon; 1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

December 9, 2011

Soft-shell crab season starts the night of the first full moon in May and lasts through September. A soft-shell crab is a blue crab fortuitously interrupted (for us, not the crab) in the middle of a growth spurt. A blue crab emerges from the muddy waters to shed its outer covering (exoskeleton). A soft-shell crab is a blue crab before its new shell hardens. Fishermen use baskets to catch crabs known as “peelers,” crabs that are beginning to split at the ends and are about to molt. They bring them onshore and hold them in water tanks until they complete the molting process. Once the peelers are in the tanks, they are watched closely to catch them within one hour of shedding. Softshell crabs that are newly shed and not pulled from the tanks are in danger, since they are immobile and basically dinner to other crabs in the water tank. Another reason to harvest them soon after shedding: if the new shell gets too hard, the fishermen have lost their harvest.

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