One of the highlights of my culinary tour of Alaska was the opportunity to jump aboard a crabbing boat and head out from Ketchikan to learn about (and taste) the King of the Pacific Coast crabs, the Dungeness. Named after the town of Dungeness, Washington they are found in eel-grass beds and muddy to sandy bottoms from Alaska's Aleutian Islands to San Francisco and have been commercially harvested since the 1880's.
Dungeness crabs have a characteristically wide, hard shell that is purplish-brown that turns orange after being boiled. The typical shell width is 7-8" and cannot be taken from the waters if the carapace is less than 6" in most states. The season for harvesting Dungeness crabs usually runs from early December to late spring. A good crabbing season can yield as much as 55 million pounds of crabs harvested along the Pacific coast. Not surprisingly, only one quarter of their total weight is actual meat. But that meat is prized for its delicate and sweet flavor. They are loaded with high quality protein and are low in calories, providing healthy amounts of zinc, copper, calcium, magnesium and iron.
I was privileged to sample some of that sweetness at the end of our tour. Several boatloads of "land lubbers" were escorted into a large dining room and served an all you can eat meal. And the hard work was already done! The crabs were already shelled. All we had to do was pick apart the legs and the halved bodies. The discarded shells made an attractive centerpiece.
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