Cleaning and Picking Meat from a Crab: How to Pick Crabs

Picking Meat from the Legs

Pulling meat from the legs

Holly A. Heyser

To get the leg meat -- again, only bother with this in blue crabs, Dungeness crabs or especially large crabs of other species -- start with whatever meat happens to be attached the end of the leg.

The meat inside the legs can best be extracted by breaking the joints backwards. Meat will usually remaing attached to a thin piece of cartilage. You just slip the meat from this cartilage.

• Getting Started
• Pick off the Legs
• Peeling off the Plate
• Opening the Body
• Remove the Lungs
• Getting to the Body Meat
• Extracting the Body Meat
• Starting on the Claws
• Picking Meat from the Legs
• Finishing Up with the Nut Cracker