Steamed Crab Legs
Already cooked, already split, and in every freezer section. Steam them for five minutes, make the butter properly, and it's the easiest good dinner there is.
- Serves
- 4
- Total
- 15 min
The best thing about crab legs is that somebody else did the work. They're caught, cooked and frozen at sea, so what arrives in the shop is already done. You are reheating, not cooking.
Which makes the method obvious once you say it out loud: steam. They're split or pre-cut, so boiling fills every leg with water and washes the flavor straight out through the cuts. Steam warms them through and leaves what's inside where it is.
Five minutes from frozen. It is the easiest genuinely good dinner available.
The butter
Melt the salted butter slowly without stirring, spoon off the clear gold and leave the milk solids behind. Half a teaspoon of Old Bay stirred in.
Salted butter, not unsalted. Salt is what makes crab taste sweet, and the same rule applies here as with lobster: without it the butter is fat and the sweetness sits flat.
If it's not right
- Watery: boiled, or the water came up over the rack.
- Stringy: overheated. Five minutes is genuinely enough.
- Cold in the middle: piled too deep. Steam more in two batches rather than one tall pile.
- Bland: the butter wasn't salted, or there wasn't enough lemon.
Ingredients
Method
-
**An inch or two of water** in a large pot with a rack or steamer insert. A tablespoon of Old Bay in the water if you want it. Bring to a hard boil.
-
**Legs on the rack,** piled is fine, lid on.
-
**5 to 6 minutes from frozen,** 3 to 4 if thawed. They're hot when you can smell them and a joint is warm to touch.
-
**Out, with the butter and lemon wedges.**
Goes with
From the journal
- Make the Fish — Fish is one of the things people reserve for restaurants, and it shouldn't be. It's fresher at home, it's faster than almost anything else, and the fishmonger is the best part.
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