Instructions for Dungeness Crab
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- Lay your cleaned crab belly up on a hard surface.
- Poke the blade into the tail end of the shell; then push and lift the handle to split it in two.
- Each individual body segment is a meat filled chamber with a leg attached. To separate the segments, insert the blade into each chamber on the side of the dividing shell wall facing the segment being removed. Push and lift along the line; then turn and drive the CrabKey nose first down between the legs to wedge them part. Do this for all segments before moving on to the next step.
- Pop out the meat in each body segment by forcefully tapping the leg on the rim of a heavy bowl; then snap off the empty body portion of the shell where it joins the leg. If you don’t have a bowl handy, you can pop out the meat by tapping on the back of the CrabKey’s head.
- To remove the leg meat, insert the blade into the open end of each segment, lift the handle and push. Split the shell top and bottom; then snap off the remaining toe end before separating the shell halves.
- Next, snap off the “knuckle” from the remaining segment and use the toe to pick out the meat inside.
- To remove the morsel of meat in the last segment, remove the toe first; then split it just like the lower leg segment.
- Concur the claw section by first splitting and removing the lower leg portion as above. To crack the knuckle, start by poking the blade into the membrane that’s on the inside where it joins the claw; then push toward the open end and lift to split that side. Split the outside by starting from the open end and working toward the claw. Pull apart and tear off the halves to expose the meat inside. Unlock the treasured claw meat by first tearing out the “thumb”; then, starting from the open end, work toward the thumb hole along the crest. Once you reach the thumb hole, work back through it on the inside toward the open end to complete the split; then lift the lid on the prize inside!