Rock / Red Crab

The Rock Crab is known to be correlated with the Pacific Red Crab and the Dungeness crab along the American West Coast.

All of these crabs live in the rocky shores, hence the name Rock crab, all of their limbs, thus their legs are walking legs whilst some species of crab have flippers for their last set of legs, such as the eastern Blue crab.

Between the two crabs, the Red crab would be the more vicious kind in comparison to the Rock crab which is more gentle. As usual you can tell the male from the female as the plate underneath the body is smaller in males. The orange roe which you can find within the female is considered a delicacy in many places and is used for meals such as Sushi and Soups etc. Many other people also eat the mustard material otherwise known as the liver, which again carries its own unique taste.

Within both of these crabs the majority of the meat comes within their thick chunky claws. This is the same as the Stone crab, and any of these crabs can be used within the same recipe from which only the experienced crab food lovers would be able to tell the difference.  

There have been many reports of catching Rock crabs that have grown to over 10 inches wide, although, the more common size range is between 4-6 inches. The main market for this species is mainly within Asia and considered just as tasty as the Dungeness Crab. The only main difference is that the meat is more difficult to dissect out of the Rock / Red crab in comparison to the Dungeness crab.

The general idea when using Red and Rock crabs for recipes is to boil the claws in a broth and eat with melted butter. With the rest of their bodies, use them to make sauces, stocks and dips.

If you have a lot of spare crabs at once, store the cooked meat and bodies in the freezer until ready to use, and if you lucky enough to get crabs that are bigger than 6 inches, consider them as any other crab and extract all the meat from their bodies and not just the claws.

Snow Crab