Green Crabs According to 44 Home Cooks
This Summer and Fall, Greencrab.org gave away 1200 pounds of live hard-shell green crabs to residents in the Greater Boston Area. Green crabs for this initiative were harvested, processed, and delivered by The Shellfish Broker: a harvester-run wholesaler based in Chatham, Massachusetts. The goal of this initiative was to understand how people handled cooking with green crabs at home and the labor associated with sorting and delivering green crabs in small batches.
July 19
Our director drove all around the Greater Boston Area with Jamie Bassett of The Shellfish Broker, delivering fresh green crabs to local residents and dropping off crabs at the Boston Fish Pier.
July 20
With the help of Our Wicked Fish and Red’s Best, BerkShore Seafood transported 70 pounds of green crabs from the Boston Fish Pier to chefs and home cooks in Western, Massachusetts.
October 18
Jamie Bassett and Matt Belson from The Shellfish Broker drove up from Chatham for a free green crab pickup event outside of Hooked Fish Shop in Somerville’s Bow Market.
To complement these free giveaway events, Greencrab.org hosted virtual cooking demonstrations that overviewed ways to shuck and prepare hard-shell green crabs. We also released new accessible recipes that utilized minimal, substitution-friendly ingredients. After participants had a chance to cook with their free green crabs, we asked them for feedback on their experience. We also distributed this survey to our network, asking that only people who have cooked with hard-shell green crabs participate.
A total of 44 people provided feedback on their experience as of November 29th, 2020. The following are preliminary results from this survey. For the complete survey results, visit this google drive link.
Who took our survey?
Before diving into specific questions about green crabs, we wanted to get an idea of who was taking our survey, their relationship with seafood, and their experience cooking with various crab species. We found the following:
Ages ranged from 13 - 73 and the average participant age was 40
Roughly half of people spent more than $30 per month on seafood.
86% had cooked with crab meat and 57% had cooked with crab legs.
57% had cooked with blue crabs and 46% had cooked with Dungeness crab.
59% had never heard of green crabs before signing up for the free crab delivery/pickup.
In summary, a lot of survey participants had cooked with crab but not green crab. Age and monthly seafood budget varied.
How did people cook with green crabs?
“I prepared a stock (with whole crabs), a concentrate (crabs without legs, apron, and carapace buzzed in a blender and strained), and picked crab meat. The concentrate and crab meat were added to a curry. The stock was frozen.”
“I quartered them, dusted with tapioca starch, quickly deep fried then made a sauce with fermented black bean paste, garlic and sambal olek (or any chopped fermented chiles) and homemade stock (green crab is best, chicken is good too) add fried crab, drained boiled fresh noodles (I used Chinese wheat noodles, but this would be good with hefen or niangao lol) garnish with scallions, crushed peanuts, fried onions or whatever your heart desires”
“Cooked em into stock and then turned that stock into risotto and also steamed/boiled some and picked em apart for the meats!”
“We made crab risotto and deep fried the smallest crabs on the day we got the crabs. The crab meat we picked out we used to make chinese stir-fried rice cakes and will probably use the remainder of the meat for the same thing. We still have 2 quarts of stock, that will probably turn into more crab risotto. Finally, I made a small test batch of chinese drunken salted crab, which turned out well too.”
A green crab roe fest prepared by Craig Fear
Green Crab Bouillabaisse by Christina Barber-Just
What did green crabs taste like according to participants?
“Sweet blue crabs”
“Salty and earthy at once”
“Stock is rich, definite crab flavor. Very pleased.”
“The meat tasted sweet”
“Light seafood flavor, almost sweet, complex flavored stock”
“Slightly buttery and briny. Great ocean flavor”
“Like any good crab meat.”
“Tender, flaky meat”
Why did people decide to participate in our free green crab pickup
“I like to cook/try new things and I love to have a good seafood broth for soups, risotto, etc.”
“They were free, and I support this approach at managing the invasive species”
“I wanted to know if how difficult it was to prepare and how good it tasted”
When asked how easy it was to cook with green crabs on a scale of 1-5 (1 being hard and 5 being easy), people scored green crabs a 3.1 on average.
We then asked what people found challenging about cooking with live, hard-shell green crabs:
“Cooking them was easy. I don't mind working with the live crabs. Eating them was the hard part. It was very difficult getting any meat out of them without shell in it.”
“Shucking them was hard”
“I didn’t enjoy killing them, and actually got pinched very hard!”
“The shucking was challenging but the opposite was the case for cooking. The meat is versatile and easily used in any number of applications. We made crabcakes. Softshell would be ideal.”
“Finding big enough pots to boil them in one go.”
86% of participants reported they’d participate in another green crab giveaway:
For raw survey data, visit this google drive link.
Over 60% of people surveyed would purchase green crab meat, live hard-shell green crabs, and frozen soft-shell green crabs if available at their seafood retailer:
For raw survey data, visit this google drive link.
90% of people would buy 1 to 5 pounds of hard-shell green crab if purchasing:
For raw survey data, visit this google drive link.
How much people would spend per pound on hard-shell green crabs varied:
In summary
Participants willing to cook with green crabs varied by age, monthly seafood budget, and experience cooking with crabs. Most participants had never cooked with green crabs prior to our giveaway and many had never heard of them.
In terms of preparation methods, people trying to shuck meat for the first time struggled the most.
A large majority of people would participate in a future green crab giveaway and most would purchase a green crab products or live green crabs if available. Participants were most interested in purchasing hard-shell crab, crab meat, and frozen soft-shell crab.
Most participants would purchase between 1 and 5 pounds of hard-shell green crab and were willing to spend more than $2 per pound.
Our biggest thanks to The Shellfish Broker, BerkShore Seafood, Red’s Best, and Our Wicked Fish, for helping make these green crab giveaways possible and to MIT Economics PhD students Kelsey Larson and Lucy Page for assisting us with drafting this survey.
What green crab products would you be most interested in seeing at your local seafood shop? Let us know in the comments below!