Sho Spaeth

Kyl Haselbauer

Dungeness crab is a species of rock crab (Metacarcinus magister) that’s found along the western coast of North America, with a <a href="https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/species/cancer-magister#regs-seasons">fishery that extends from the Aleutian Island in Alaska to Mexico</a>. Considered a delicacy, it takes its name from the Dungeness Spit, a natural deposit of sand that encloses Dungeness Bay, where the crabs proliferate. Dungeness crabs are the most commercially important crab species on the West Coast, particularly for communities in the Pacific Northwest.

Dungeness crabs have distinctive purplish or reddish gray-brown shells. While they are quite large and can grow to about 10 inches across, the ones available for sale are usually measure about 6 to 7 inches across and weigh about 2 to 3 pounds. In the United States, regulations governing crab sizes and catch limits are administered at the state level, and as a result vary from state to state. In <a href="https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/commercial/crab/coastal/about#:~:text=Dungeness%20crab%20management%20on%20the,the%20primary%20male%20molt%20period.">Washington state</a>, crabs must be 6 1/4 inches across or larger to be harvested, and it’s prohibited to harvest female crabs. 

Is there a Dungeness crab season?

Cooked and frozen Dungeness crabs are available year-round. The fresh harvest season begins in January and extends into the summer—its duration depends on harvest numbers and geographical area.

What’s so great about Dungeness crab?

Dungeness crabs have firm and sweet meat that has a very “clean,” not muddy, flavor. They are prized because they have a relatively high ratio of edible meat to body weight; in our testing, we averaged a 30 percent yield.

How is Dungeness crab prepared?

Dungeness crabs are typically steamed or boiled, and the cooked meat is very versatile. It’s served both hot and cold in a wide range of applications, like <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/crab-rolls">soups</a>, salads, <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/dungeness-crab-pasta">pastas</a>, and crabby riffs on dishes likes <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/crabby-eggs-benedict">eggs Benedict</a>, poke, and omelets. 

Dungeness crab can be steamed or boiled whole or in parts until the meat is entirely cooked through, but it can also be par-cooked, cleaned, and finished using other cooking methods, such as stir-frying.

What Is Dungeness Crab?

You usually have three options when buying Dungeness crabs: live whole crabs; cooked whole crabs; or cooked, picked crab meat.

We recommend seeking out and buying live whole crabs; the flavor of a freshly cooked crab is far superior to crab that has already been cooked and frozen. 

That being said, sometimes you just want to crack some crab and chow down, even in the deadest doldrums of November, so we’ll give you advice on what to look out for with frozen cooked crab, too.

As with any seafood, we recommend buying crab from a purveyor you trust and, ideally, have previous experience with. They should be forthcoming about where and when the product was harvested; if they cannot give you that information, it’s probably best to buy your crab somewhere else. 

If you can only find—or prefer the convenience of—cooked crab meat, we recommend using it for cold preparations, such as salads, or warm preparations in which the crab is a supporting player, like pasta and crab cakes. 

We recommend using live crab you’ve cooked yourself for hot preparations where the crab is the star, although it can of course be used for any crab preparation you like.

Live whole crab

If you are picking out live crabs in person, there are three things you should look out for: 
 
1. The crab should be kept in a tank, not displayed dry. 
2. The crab should be alive and lively. It should be moving around, and it should be feisty. 
3. The crab should have both claws and all of its legs, and the claws and legs should all be about the same size. There’s a lot of meat in the legs and claws, and you want it all. 

When you select your crab(s), ask the fishmonger to let the water drain away from the crab before they weigh it. You don’t want to pay for excess saltwater weight, and if it’s a reputable establishment, they will totally understand. 

If you order live crabs from an online purveyor, you may find that the crabs aren’t particularly lively if they’ve been packed properly, as they should be very cold; crabs will be a little sluggish at near freezing temperatures. However, they should still be alive, and once you take them out of the packaging and they warm up a little, they should perk right up. 

If you don’t have a local, trusted source for fresh or frozen Dungeness crab, our preferred online source for them is <a href="https://www.e-fish.com/">e-Fish</a>, which sells live crabs when they’re in season.

Cooked whole crab

Here are a few things to consider if you buy cooked whole Dungeness crab: 

1. We recommend buying precooked crab that’s still frozen. Defrosting a whole crab is simple, and when you defrost the crab yourself, you know it hasn’t been sitting around thawed for days waiting for some unlucky soul (you!) to grab it.
2. Look for any damage to the body and the legs, and make sure the crab has all of its claws and legs.
3. If you’re buying thawed crab, make sure the edges of the shell aren’t exuding oozy liquid.
4. The shell should be a vibrant red-orange, and it should not be starting to brown or darken.
5. Smell it. Ask to give the crab a little sniff if they’ll let you. If you get even the slightest whiff of ammonia (a sure sign of spoilage), skip that crab. If they don’t let you smell it, buy your seafood somewhere else.
6. When you get the crab home, clean it and separate the innards from the rest of the crab as soon as possible. If the innards are bright yellowish-orange, you can hold on to them and eat them, provided the crab was harvested from an area with no environmental issues (more details on that below); if the innards are a darker brownish-orange, just discard them. 

Cooked picked crab meat

Picked crab meat is the most convenient option. Many, if not most, commercial kitchens purchase picked meat to save on labor costs.

Here, again, we suggest buying picked meat in sealed tubs that are still frozen; they’re easy to defrost yourself, and you don’t have to wonder how long it’s been since they were originally thawed. Once thawed, the meat should not smell of ammonia at all.

How to Shop for Dungeness Crab

Like lobster and shrimp, when crabs die, their inner organs (the hepatopancreas in shrimp and the tomalley in crab and lobster) secrete digestive enzymes that immediately begin to digest their flesh, turning it mushy. This is why crabs and lobsters are often cooked whole while alive; heating destroys the enzymes. Freezing also halts the process, which is why it’s best to purchase frozen shrimp rather than thawed ones (all shrimp are immediately frozen once they come out of the water).

Why crabs should be cooked while alive (or just after being killed)

There are several ways to prepare and cook live Dungeness crab, but we strongly recommend just two, as they give you the most control: breaking up the crab into its three component parts—body, claws, and legs—and boiling each group of parts for specific times or breaking the crab into leg clusters and par-cooking them. 

Both methods set you up for maximum success no matter what your final crab dish is. If you boil the crab in parts, you’ll have perfectly cooked crab whether you’re serving it in its shell or picking the meat for salads or pasta. Crabs par-cooked in clusters are ideally suited for being finished in a stir-fry or a deliciously messy bowl of crab soup. 

Get a big pot of water boiling

Regardless of the method you choose, you’ll need to kill the crab and separate it into parts, and you will need boiling water to cook it. 

Dungeness crabs are big, so you’re going to need a big pot, and you need to fill it with enough water that the crab parts will be fully submerged when added to the pot. We recommend using a 12-quart pot, which gives you a lot of room to work in. If you do not have one, use the largest pot you have. If all you have is a 5-quart Dutch oven, fill it halfway up with water; you need to provide ample headspace to account for the foam that bubbles up when proteins leak out of the cooked crab into the boiling water, which will make a stinky mess of your stovetop if it overflows the pot. You just want a high enough level for the crab parts to be fully submerged.

Fill the pot with ample water and then season it; it should be salty like the sea. Not in the way that people say pasta water should be salty (which should be seasoned more like a soup); it should literally be as salty as the sea: 35 grams of salt per liter of water. 

Chill and kill the crab

Since you followed our advice above about picking out feisty crabs, we have to make those crabs less feisty before we take them apart.

Prepare a large ice bath. Dunk the live crab in the ice water and wait for it to chill (out); it should turn sluggish quickly, about 2 minutes. 

Transfer the chilled crab to a work surface and place it on its back; save the ice bath. Holding the crab body securely with a kitchen towel, firmly insert the tip of a chef’s knife into the crab’s mouth and out the top shell between its eyes. Don’t stab it, just press firmly; it should slide right in. This will kill the crab quickly and make it easier to take apart. 

Give the crab a minute; it should not move or resist at all when you start the cleaning process.

At this point, you can proceed to separating the crab into clusters and par-cooking them, for use in stir-fries or a clambake, or you can proceed to separating the crab into parts and cooking them completely, for eating out of the shell or for picking the crab meat for some other application.

The Best Ways to Kill, Clean, and Cook Live Dungeness Crab

Use this method if you plan on using the crab in a stir-fry or a clambake and need par-cooked crab clusters.

How to Clean and Par-Cook Dungeness Crab for Stir-Fries

Set up a workstation with the reserved ice bath, a sheet pan for cleaned crab parts, a sheet pan for shells (if saving, optional), and a bowl for tomalley (if saving, optional).

Flip the crab over so its ventral (bottom) side is facing up. Locate the abdominal flap and carefully pry it up—watch out for the sharp bits (the gonopores) right above the flap. Tear the flap away and discard it.

Flip the body over, place your thumb at the base where the abdominal flap used to be and pry the top shell off; reserve the top shell for stock (optional). Remove and discard the gills—the long tongues of spongy white material that line the body meat. Remove and discard any innards that aren’t vibrant orange or yellow color; place orange and yellow innards in tomalley bowl (optional).

Step 1: Open crab and remove innards

Using a heavy knife, cut crab body in half.

Gently rinse the crab body of any residue from the internal organs under running water. 

Transfer the body to a work surface. Remove the claw arms by twisting them off and back; set aside. Using a sharp, heavy knife, cut the body into quarters. You should have two claw arms and four leg clusters with two legs protruding from each. 

Set the crab pieces on the prepared sheet pan and repeat process with any remaining crabs.

Step 2: Separate into leg clusters

Line a 1/2 sheet pan with clean kitchen towels or paper towels. 

Add the crab pieces to the boiling water and cook for 1 minute. Using a spider strainer or tongs, transfer crab pieces to prepared ice bath and let sit until completely chilled, about 2 minutes. 

Transfer crab pieces to prepared sheet pan and pat dry.

Step 3: Blanch crab pieces

If you want to enjoy perfectly cooked crab meat, use this method. Just like with lobsters, different parts of the crab cook at different rates. Throwing whole crabs into a pot of boiling water and expecting every piece to be cooked just right is wishful thinking. By staggering the cooking into stages, you get perfectly cooked crab, every time.

How to Clean and Cook Dungeness Crab

Using kitchen shears, separate each leg and claw from the body at the second joint. Place the legs, claw arms, and body on a sheet pan and let sit until any excess liquid has drained off, about 1 minute. 

Rinse all parts under cold running water—this helps reduce the amount of protein foaming that occurs during boiling—and separate the parts into three piles: body, claws, and legs. 

Repeat with any additional crabs. If you are cooking a lot of crabs, process only two to three at a time so the digestive enzymes in the innards don’t have time to affect the flesh.

Step 1: Separate crab into individual parts

Set reserved ice bath next to stovetop. Line a 1/2 sheet pan with clean kitchen towels or paper towels. 

Set a timer for 10 minutes. Add crab bodies to pot of boiling water. 

Once 5 minutes have elapsed, add claws to pot. 

Once 8 minutes have elapsed, add legs to pot. 

When the timer goes off, transfer claws and legs to the ice bath. 

Remove crab body from pot and insert a digital instant-read thermometer into a leg opening to a minimum depth of 1 inch; if the thermometer reads [f 145] or higher, transfer crab bodies to ice bath. If the temperature is lower than [f 145], continue cooking, checking every minute until temperature reads [f 145]. 

If you’re serving the crab immediately, transfer crab from ice bath to prepared sheet pan and let drain, about 2 minutes. Proceed to reheating step (see below). 

If you’re preparing the crab in advance or for its picked meat, let crab sit in ice bath until completely chilled, about 20 minutes. Transfer to prepared sheet pan and let drain, about 2 minutes.

Step 2: Boil crab parts in stages

The method described above is for the perfectionist crab lover; it yields perfectly cooked meat, as each section of the crab is cooked for the ideal amount of time. 

However, if you are less concerned about every last morsel being perfectly succulent, and you want the experience of setting a hot, steamy, hulking Dungeness crab on a newspaper-lined table and just going at it with a mallet and crackers and your bare hands, you can boil it whole. There’s no need to kill the crab first, and there’s no need to separate it into its parts (until it’s time to devour it, that is). 

If that’s what you want to do, you’ll still need the big pot of salty-like-the-sea boiling water, and you’ll still probably want to chill out the critter in an ice bath before tossing it in the pot. But once you toss the crab in the pot and cover it with a lid, all you have to do is cook it for 7 minutes and 30 seconds per pound.

How to boil a whole crab

To thaw previously cooked then frozen whole Dungeness crab, we recommend placing the whole crab on a wire rack set inside a 1/2 sheet pan lined with paper towels, wrapping the sheet pan entirely in plastic wrap, and refrigerating it until the crab is fully thawed; this can take up to 48 hours for a fully frozen crab. 

If you are in a bind and you need to that the crab quickly, you can use the following method. Be warned: We only recommend this method in an emergency. 

To rapidly thaw frozen crab, you can submerge the crab in cold, running water until it’s thawed. The water must be below [f 40]. Use a digital instant-read thermometer to measure the temperature of the water flowing out of the faucet and the water the crab is submerged in to make sure the temperature is below [f 40]; if it is not, add enough ice to the water to maintain a sub-[f 40] bath throughout the defrosting process. 

Do not allow the crab to sit in the water for longer than 2 hours.

How to Thaw Previously Cooked and Frozen Dungeness Crab

We recommend using previously cooked and frozen crab only for cold crab applications. If you want to eat hot crab, we strongly recommend buying live crabs and cooking them yourself. 

No matter what kind of cooked crab you’ve got on your hands, the best way to reheat it for serving is as follows: 

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to [f 250]. 

Soak kitchen towels thoroughly in water. 

Wrap crab pieces in soaked kitchen towels and place on a 1/2 sheet pan. 

Place sheet pan in oven until crab has reached [f 130], about 25 min.

How to Reheat Cooked, Shell-On Dungeness Crab

You’ve got a cooked Dungeness crab, and you want all that meat out of the surrounding shell, stat. Here’s how to do it. 

Before you get started, set up a picking station: A bowl each for body meat, claw meat, and leg meat; a bowl for tomalley and other innards; a 1/2 sheet pan for shells and scraps for crab stock; and another 1/2 sheet pan for any discard.

How to Pick Crab Meat

Flip the body over so its ventral (bottom) side is facing up. Locate the abdominal flap and carefully pry it up—watch out for the sharp bits (the gonopores) right above the flap. Tear the flap away and discard it. 

Flip the body over, place your thumb at the base where the abdominal flap used to be and pry the top shell off; reserve the top shell for stock (optional). Remove and discard the gills—the long tongues of spongy white material that line the body meat. Remove and discard any innards that aren’t vibrant orange or yellow color; place orange and yellow innards in tomalley bowl (optional). 

Rinse body under cold running water to remove any remaining innards. Using shears, cut the body in half. Set aside.

Step 1: Remove top shell

Separate each leg into sections by bending each joint back and gently pulling the segments apart so the cartilage pulls cleanly out of the meat. Set aside several of the sharp leg tips to help with removing meat from the shell; reserve the rest for stock (optional).

Working with one segment at a time, using thin-tip shears, cut along the top and bottom curve of the leg segments and knuckles. When all the segments have been cut, separate the two sides and use the reserved leg tips to remove the meat cleanly from the shells, transferring meat as you go to the bowl for leg meat. Reserve shell pieces for stock (optional).

Step 2: Break down legs

Start by removing the dactyl, or the top part of the claw, by gently moving it from side to side and then pulling up and back. You should be able to cleanly pull the cartilage out while leaving the meat intact inside the claw.

Separate the three sections of each claw arm by bending each join back and gently pulling segments apart. Using thin-tipped shears, cut through the bottom and top edges of the two non-claw sections to remove the shell and access the meat inside. Lay the claw flat on a work surface and give it a light but firm tap with the butt of a chef’s knife or a meat mallet, not so hard that you crush the shell but hard enough for it to crack. Slide the claw meat out.

Step 3: Break down claws

If you plan on serving the legs and claw arms whole, there’s nothing wrong with just setting them out with a crab cracker and some bibs and letting your guests go to town. 

However, you can use thin-tipped kitchen shears to cut through one side of each leg section, similar to the way you’d cut up the shells to remove whole leg pieces. This makes it much easier and less messy for people to access the meat in the shell, but it still gives you the cracking-crab-at-the-table experience. 

Exposing the meat in this way also allows the meat to absorb seasoning without falling out of the shell.

Serving leg and claw clusters? Prep them for easy eating.

Using shears, make a small cut between each of the leg openings on both the top and bottom sides of each half of the body. Using your fingers, separate each body half into five segments. 

Working with one segment at a time, insert reserved leg tips into each leg hole and give it a wiggle to help loosen the meat. Using the leg tip, push lump meat out of each segment.

Step 4: Pick body meat

No matter how cleanly you work, you should look over the picked crab meat to make sure there aren’t any shell fragments in the mix. There’s nothing worse than chomping down on a hard piece of shell. 

The best way to do this is to use a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/tips-tricks-all-crab-meat-no-shells">black light</a>.

Otherwise, you have to use touch and sight to do the best job you can. Here are some tips for setting yourself up for success: 

1. Be patient with picking the meat in the first place. The fewer bits of shell that make it into the picked meat, the fewer bits of shell you have to take out of the picked meat. 

2. Work quickly and/or in batches. Keeping cooked crab cold is important if you want it to retain its sweet, clean flavor. If you’re picking through a little bit of crab, work as quicky as you can without rushing. If you’re working with a lot of picked crabs, process it in batches. 

3. Focus on the meat from the body, not the legs. If you’ve taken apart the crab properly, it’s far more likely that the body meat will have shell pieces than the legs or claws. 

4. Spread the picked crab in a single, even layer. This will help make any shell bits visible and make the process quicker and more efficient. 

5. Don’t stress about preserving “lumps.” Unlike with something like blue crab meat, where you want to try to preserve “lump meat” chunks, when you’re picking through Dungeness meat, you can really run your fingertips through the meat, feeling for any bits of shell.

{activity:5RQ4V5oKREWSNxD4BXjl7i}

How to use an ultraviolet black light to pick out crab shells.

Tips & Tricks: The Rave-Worthy Secret to Perfectly Picked Crab

Step 5: Look over picked meat to remove any shell pieces

They’re delicious, that’s why! Need another reason? You paid good money for them! 

Crab shells are packed with flavor, which can be easily extracted by simmering them in water. If you roast the shells first, the resulting crab stock tastes even better. You can even pulse roasted crab shells in a food processor, pack the fragments into freezer bags, and conveniently store the compact package until you amass enough for a big batch of crab stock. What do you make with crab stock? How about an elegant <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/dungeness-crab-pasta">plate of pasta</a>?

Crab tomalley, or “crab butter,” is considered a delicacy by crab fans; it’s super rich with a mineral-like tang that some people, us very much included, can’t get enough of. You can dip crab meat into it and just use it like a sauce, but you can also turn it into an actual crab butter and use that to make <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/crab-rolls">our crab rolls.</a>

Another great way to use crab shells and tomalley: our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/crab-chawanmushi">crab chawanmushi</a>. The shells fortify a dashi, which is blended with eggs and the raw tomalley and then cooked sous vide to produce the most ethereally delicate crab custard.

If you’re working with already cooked then frozen crab and you’re not sure about the quality of the shells or tomalley, just throw them out. If the shells don’t smell of ammonia and the tomalley is bright orange/red, you’ll be fine, though.

{activity:1GSzoGFHd0tKHfDBhJEcbS}

Sous vide Dungeness crab chawanmushi recipe (savory crab custard).

Dungeness Crab Chawanmushi

Why You Should Save Crab Shells and Guts

We love to use and eat the “crab butter,” the inner organs of the crab. However, depending on where the crab was harvested, there can be safety concerns associated with eating its organs. <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-a-neurotoxin-in-crabs-causes-brain-damage/">Crabs are relatively inefficient at getting rid of toxins like domoic acid from their tomalley</a>, even though their flesh can be unaffected.

The best way to be certain of the safety of eating crab innards is to ask your source where and when the crabs were harvested. State authorities issue guidance and warnings about crabs that have been harvested from waters with known biotoxin hazards, and it’s relatively simple to find that information if you know where your crabs were harvested from.

If in doubt, throw it out. Also, if you eat a lot of crab, you may want to consider limiting your tomalley consumption to just once a month, as eating tomalley frequently can lead to consuming unsafe amounts of harmful chemicals like <a href="https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/01608/wdfw01608.pdf">polychlorinated biphenyls, particularly if the crabs are harvested near urban areas</a>.

Is eating crab innards safe?

You’ve got your cleaned, perfectly cooked Dungeness crab. Now what do you do with it? 

Of course, you can just shovel it into your face a fistful at a time (it doesn’t need anything else!). But there are a lot of delicious ways to serve it that ate a little more civilized. 

1. Serve the crab as-is, with some condiments, if you like. Serve the in-shell crab pieces on ice or warm with your favorite condiments and dippers alongside—we like to serve ours with cocktail sauce and/or <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/japanese-kewpie-style-mayo">Japanese-style Kewpie mayo</a>. 

2. Serve picked meat in composed dishes. Like <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/crabby-eggs-benedict">eggs Benedict</a>, as the filling in a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/traditional-french-omelette">classic, French omelette</a>, or in a riff on <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/dungeness-crab-pasta">fra diavolo.</a> 

3. Use picked meat as an elegant garnish. It complements all sorts of things so well: <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-chawanmushi">chawanmushi</a>, <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/flavorful-vibrant-blender-soups">delicate, fresh-tasting soups</a>, even a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/tornado-omelet-technique">tornado omelet</a>. 

4. Finish par-cooked crab. Those par-cooked crab clusters are waiting for just a little bit more heat to get them to serving temperature. Put ’em in a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/home-clambake">clambake</a>, stir-fry them, or add them to a soup. 

5. Make a whole crab experience. Use every last bit of the crab to make a crabby eating experience: <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/crab-rolls">Crab rolls with crab butter, served with crab bisque and picked crab meat.</a>

How to Serve Cooked Dungeness Crab

If you purchase live crabs and can’t cook them right away, place them on their backs on a rack set in a 1/2 sheet pan (preferred) or a sheet pan lined with kitchen towels, cover them with a wet towel, and place them in the back of your refrigerator on the lowest shelf. You should store them for as little time as possible; a maximum of 2 to 3 days. Storing them on their back will make it impossible for them to escape and keeping them damp and cold will keep them alive. 

Thawed crab can be stored on a rack set in a 1/2 sheet pan (preferred) or lined with kitchen towels and well-wrapped in plastic wrap (this is to prevent the crab from absorbing odors from other food—and other food from absorbing crab odors). 

In-shell meat can be kept on ice in the refrigerator for 3 days maximum. 

Picked crab meat can be stored in an airtight container for up to 1 day or packed into a ziplock-style freezer bag in a thin, even layer and frozen. It will keep for up to 1 month in the freezer.

How to Store Dungeness Crab

Cooking and cracking Dungeness crab is pretty straightforward, and all you really need is a pot and a pair of working hands to feast. But if you want to make it easier on yourself, you’ll need a few tools. 

<a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/knives">Sharp, heavy chef’s knife</a> 

We recommend killing crabs just before you cook them, and the way we kill them is by knifing them right through the head. This is much easier to do if you have a sharp, heavy chef’s knife. If you have a medium- to large-sized deba, or Japanese-style fish butchering knife, even better; they have a spine that gets thicker and thicker as it approaches the tang, which gives them a lot of heft and helps with cutting through tough stuff like crab carapaces and fish skulls. 

<a href="https://www.all-clad.com/gourmet-accessories-stainless-steel-multi-pot-with-lid-perforated-insert-and-steamer-insert-12-quart.html">12-quart stock pot</a> 

Few homes have a 12-quart stock pot, which makes sense. Not a lot of home cooks out there will ever need 12-quarts of stock at any given time, let alone regularly. However, a 12-quart stock pot gives you a lot of room to work with, particularly if you’re cooking more than a couple Dungeness crabs. 

The smallest pot you can reasonably get away with is a 5-quart Dutch oven. Filling it halfway up with water will give you sufficient room to boil a single crab, and there’s enough headspace that the pot won’t foam over during cooking, creating a huge mess. 

<a href="https://www.thermoworks.com/thermapen-one/?tw=CHEFSTEPS">Digital instant-read thermometer</a> 

We recommend separating a crab into its parts and then cooking each part for a specific amount of time, and you will need a digital instant-read thermometer if you want to be 100 percent sure you’re cooking your crab perfectly. It’s also useful if you’re checking temperatures for water for defrosting and when reheating crab pieces. 

<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002P64OMC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B002P64OMC&linkCode=as2&tag=chefsteps02-20&linkId=d2c3efcdaa0b5f084f908018a6690616">12-inch spring-loaded tongs</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hiware-Stainless-Spider-Strainer-Skimmer/dp/B071D8R93Y?tag=chefsteps02-20">spider strainer</a> 

There’s nothing wrong with just using your hands to grab a Dungeness crab (grab ’em from the butt, so the claws can’t get you). But once they’ve spent a little time a boiling water bath, you’ll want to use tools to get it out. 12-inch spring-loaded tongs are strong enough grippers to lift the big crabs up and out, but it can help to have a spider strainer around. 

<a href="https://www.macknife.com/collections/accessories/products/mac-6-1-2-kitchen-snips-ks-63">Thin-tipped kitchen shears</a> 

When taking apart crab, it helps to have shears. For finer detailed work, like opening up legs so they’re easier to pick (or easier to eat from when served on ice), a thin-tipped pair of scissors is super useful. You can slide the tips into even the thinnest Dungeness crab legs and snip away without mangling the meat. 

<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Ware-Natural-Aluminum-Commercial/dp/B0049C2S32/?tag=chefsteps02-20">Sheet pans</a> 

Sheet pans are endlessly useful! With crabs, you can use them to store ’em live or cooked, use them for prep, use them for picking over picked meat to find errant shells, and you can use them to reheat the crabs, too! 

<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hiware-Lobster-Crackers-Picks-10-Piece/dp/B01B7CZ3R4/?tag=chefsteps02-20">Crab crackers</a> 

If you want to chow down on a whole boiled crab (and you don’t want to make it easier on your guests by cutting open the shells and picking the meat for them), you’ll want to grab some crab crackers. Also grab a bunch of paper towels!

Essential Equipment and Tools

Cracking Dungeness crabs can be a deliciously messy business. But it doesn’t have to be! The team at ChefSteps has tons of experience with these critters. We’re based in Seattle, which is famous for its crab, and we’ve shopped for, cleaned, cooked, cracked, and picked countless crabs both at home and in restaurant kitchens.We’ve pooled our collective knowledge about all things Dungeness crab and set it down here, so you can be 100 percent confident that you’re buying the best crab possible, cooking and cleaning it perfectly, and not wasting any of it. Let’s get crackin’!

The Ultimate Guide to Dungeness Crab