Home › French Recipes › Crabs with Rice
Crabs with Rice
15 small crabs 1 cup rice 2 or 3 small onions 2 small carrots 1 tablespoon butter Salt and pepper Clean the crabs. Cut off and crush the legs, and cook in boiling salted water for about an hour. Strain the juice and pour it over the rice. Let stand for about half an hour and then cook until rice is tender. Cook the chopped onion and carrots in the butter until slightly browned and then add the crab-meat. Season with salt and pepper, add the rice and cook together for several minutes. Serve hot. This is an old provincial recipe and has a particularly delicious taste that makes it a favorite.
A one-pot rice dish built on crab stock rather than crab meat alone. Everything depends on the strength of that stock, and the original is vague about liquid quantities, so measure as you go.
- The hinge: the stockThe hour-long boil appears to be for extracting flavour from crushed shell and leg rather than for cooking meat, though the original does not say so. Add enough water just to cover the shells, and strain and measure the result: for 1 cup of raw white rice, about 2 cups of liquid is a workable figure, reduced or topped up with water to reach it.
- "15 small crabs"Probably the sort of small shore crabs sold cheaply for stock and hard to find now; the recipe names neither species nor region. As a modern substitute, figure on roughly 2 lb of small whole crabs for the stock plus about 8 oz to 1 lb of picked crabmeat for the finished dish; blue crab or Dungeness picked meat both work.
- Picking the meatThe recipe never says where the body meat comes from; presumably the bodies go into the same pot and are picked once cool enough to handle. If so, give only the shells and legs the full hour and lift the bodies out after 12 to 15 minutes so the meat does not turn to thread.
- Salting the waterSalted cooking water becomes the rice's only liquid, so keep it light. Season the water as you would pasta water at most, and correct at the end rather than the beginning.
- The soakStanding the rice in warm stock for half an hour lets it absorb flavour before the grains set. Use a plain medium- or long-grain rice, not parboiled or instant, which will not take up liquid this way.
- ButterOne tablespoon is scant for browning onion and carrot; two to three tablespoons gives a better result and does not make the dish greasy. Dice the carrot small so it softens in the same time as the onion.
- Finishing"Cook together for several minutes" means only long enough to heat the crab through, three or four minutes over low heat. Fold rather than stir hard, or the lump meat breaks up and the rice turns starchy.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; 1 cup of rice suggests two or three main-course servings, or four as a first course.