Chesapeake Bay Cooking

How to Eat a Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab

• Flip the crab over

• Flip open the apron

• Flip off the top shell

• Pull out the gills and innards.

• Break the body in half, leaving the legs and claws on.

• Squish down the flipper end (backfin) and twist it to produce a  big piece of backfin meat.

• Pull off the swimming legs and claws one by one.  Suck out the little piece of meat at the end of each.  Save the claws.

• Take a paring knife and split each half of the crab through horizontally, exposing chambers of crabmeat.  Use the knife to pick out the meat.  

• Take a claw and break it apart at the joint.  Break the claw with a mallet and pick out the crabmeat.

• Keep repeating the process until you're full.

Smith Island Cake

Smith Island's traditional 10 layer cake has been named the Official Desert of Maryland.  Smith Island Cake crams 10 impossibly thin layers of cake and icing into a cake that is only about three inches tall.  Island bakers will ship cakes to folks on the mainland.  Or, you can try baking a Smith Island Cake at home.

Chesapeake Bay Seafood Recipes:

Maryland By the Sea Menu by Emeril Lagasse.  Includes Chesapeake Bay Oyster Shooters and Steamed Blue Crabs with Homemade Bay Seasoning.

Chesapeake Bay Rockfish Recipes.  A variety of ways to cook rockfish (striped bass).

Patti La Belle's "Make-You-Wanna-Hooler" Maryland crab cakes.  As featured on Good Morning America.

Phillips' Maryland Style Crab Cakes.  Shirley Phillips' Maryland-style crab cake recipe - simple and delicious.

Senator Barbara Mikulski's crabcake recipe.  Senator Barb's favorite crab cake recipe.

Chesapeake Bay Seasoning Mix Recipe.  Homemade Chesapeake Bay seasoning.

Buy Crab Cakes Online
The Crab Place mixes exactly the right spices with the finest crab to produce a crab cake with exquisite flavor. They gently blend a few simple ingredients into their sweet, tender crabmeat and then shape the mixture into patties or balls. Both are homemade from all lump Maryland blue crab meat, delivered to your door individually wrapped, frozen, and ready for your frying pan. Click here to buy them in packages of 6, 12 or 24.

Blue Crabs: Catch 'em, Cook 'em, Eat 'em.  by Peter Meyer.  Information about the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab, including methods of catching crabs and how to cook and eat them once you've caught them.  A great little guide for anyone interested in doing some crabbing.  Click here for more information.  Buy from Amazon.com.

More information about the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab