Chicagoist: Soft Shell Crabs Make Us Happy

kiki

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 14:26:58 -0600

i just read somewhere that you can also kill the crab by snipping its head off with scissors as well as snipping off that triangular thing on their chest. too gruesome! it would put me off eating the critters.

wu

Mon, 15 May 2006 15:50:40 -0600

wow, that's pretty brutal. A face stabbing? Why not just use a sawed off shotgun or something?

Caroline

Mon, 15 May 2006 15:19:42 -0600

Answer: cleaning=killing, crab is very much dead when you soak it/fry it up. Since it's dead, no death rattle. Though, in my experience, cooking lobsters (which I assume is what you're referring to) doesn't necessarily lead to screaming either. With lobsters, if you are afraid of hearing them scream but still love their tasty tasty lobster-ness, you can (this sounds brutal, but no more than eating them, really) stab them with a sharp knife between the eyes before you boil them...then they're already dead, you see.

jd

Mon, 15 May 2006 14:02:39 -0600

question - when you said the best crab is one that's still alive and then the butcher cleans it, does cleaning it mean killing it or just getting dirt and stuff off it? i guess my real question is: is the crab alive/squirming when you're putting flour on it? i didn't realize this originally, but suddenly the "breathing room" pun sounds inappropriate, particularly since the preferred entre is best enjoyed when its freshly killed. yes, more breathing room, please! seriously though, do i have to kill this thing by dropping it in hot oil? do you hear anything ugly like the life squealing out of it?

Caroline

Mon, 15 May 2006 11:20:01 -0600

Well, thank you kindly!

curmudgeon

Mon, 15 May 2006 11:12:47 -0600

That is the best picture of food ever posted on Chicagoist!