Dungeness crab is a West Coast favorite for its sweet, delicate flavor. The best way to prepare our Dungeness crab clusters is to steam them, crack open the clusters, and enjoy. Our Dungeness crab will also have plenty of shoulder meat, which is especially loaded with goodness.
Our Dungeness crab is pre-cooked before freezing, so you can eat our crab without steaming it. But if you'd like to heat up the crab, the heat from steaming our Dungeness crab clusters preserves the tender, moist texture and helps the crab maintain its flavor. Just keep the steaming short. Here is the best way to steam your Dungeness crab:
- Use a steamer basket and fill the bottom inch of a pot with water. You can use plain water or add some white wine, herbs, or a couple of lemon slices. Adding these extras to your steam broth gives a complexity to the crab.
- Bring to a boil, add the crab clusters, and seal up the pot with a good lid.
- Steam for about 4 minutes from thawed and at least 6 minutes if cooking the crab from frozen. When you pull the clusters out of the pot, they should be giving off their own steam.
If you don’t have a steamer basket, no worries. You can cover the bottom of a pot with water with no more than a quarter inch’s depth. The key is to be shallow enough so that your crab clusters are steamed rather than boiled. But there should be enough water so that the water doesn’t burn off before the crab clusters cook through.
Follow the manufacturers’ instructions to use any kind of pressure cooker like a Instant Pot.
Once you’ve steamed your Dungeness crab clusters, you can eat the delicious meat right out of the shells. But you can also dip the meat into sauces, put it on salads, make into crab cakes, or serve with pasta or mac and cheese.
Like all of our Alaska Gold seafood, we recommend thawing the crab in your fridge for 24 hours before serving. Thawing before cooking is the best way to ensure even cooking and preserves texture. But in a pinch, you can easily cook our Dungeness crab clusters straight from the freezer. To cook crab from frozen, rinse off any ice glaze under cold, running water. You will need to steam most likely at least 5 minutes.
But wait...there's more. Save the crab shells to make crab stock for a bouillabaisse. After removing all the meat from the crab clusters, put in a pot of water. Bring water to a simmer. Add shells, bay leaf, peppercorns, & orange peel. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.
If you're looking for an original recipe for our Dungeness Crab, we recommend this Mediterranean-themed Dungeness Crab Gyros Recipe.
