15:56
hey mom come have a look in here I got a surprise for you what you got so this is how I would usually prepare my crabs when we're catching them at home and fresh out of the river so I'm gonna just you do have to be really careful um typically the best thing to do is to well you know what I like to do is I like to get tongs okay so the thing is that you can hold the crab from behind because it can't get you from behind so this is where you want to hold just oh my goodness this guy's really strong so if you hold the crab from behind like this he can't come back and swing you even if he's you know got these claws loose so that's kind of the way you want to do it now I like to put mine in the freezer first okay
so these guys go into the freezer I don't want to freeze the meat so much um so I look I'm going to give it like 20 minutes and we'll come back and sit so now that our crabs are a little bit stunned almost asleep there'll still be a little bit of movement here but they won't be as hard to handle now I'm going to take my knife and very swiftly dispatch them now you can remove the string oh my goodness these guys are so heavy they are going to be delicious so now we can clean the crabs so you want to start by pulling off that little flap on the underside of the crab and then pulling the hard top shell off so now you can remove what's called Dead Man fingers yeah a little gruesome but
anyway it's these like little gray furry feathery bits that you want to get rid of now split the body in half and this is where you want to give everything a really good clean because mud crabs live in mud so clean out all of that gunky grain yellow stuff in the middle and also clean the shells of the crab and don't forget to clean that head as well you might not want to eat it but you definitely want it for decorative purposes so now we can get on to portioning up our crab pieces here now I like to keep things rather large and chunky I'll divide up the body into about three or four pieces and then you really want to crack the hard bits of shell like the pincer and some of the harder leg pieces so that
the sauce can really get in there and so that it's easier for you to eat at the table and that's it now your crab pieces are ready to go whether you're steaming or stir-frying them or turning them into some sort of yummy pasta yeah love crab cheers
