Fire, butter and crabs. What’s not to like? I love a good crab boil, but this is now my go to recipe when I catch a few buckets of fine crustaceans. This is the Cajun version, if you prefer Maryland’s, use Old Bay instead of the Zatarains. Or just leave both out for a delicate garlic butter flavor. The killer part of this recipe is the way the tiny bit of smoke char melds with the sweet succulent crab meat.  In this recipe, I use cleaned crabs.  Don’t know how or what a cleaned crab is?  Check out my tutorial.  If you like eating “mustard” or  don’t mind wiping the mustard off your meat, use whole crabs.

Ingredients

• 30 cleaned blue crabs or ten cleaned Dungeness
• 2 cups of butter
•  3 TBS of Zatarains liquid crab boil
• 2 TBS Worchestire sauce
•  Juice of 1 lemon
•  1 TBS salt
•  1 tsp garlic powder
•  1 tsp cayenne

Method

•  Melt the butter in a sauce pan over very low heat and combine everything but the crabs.
• In a large bowl, toss the crabs with the melted butter, its ok if the butter clumps on the cold crabs. Save back some of the butter serving at the table.
•  Line your grill with foil over a medium high heat to about 300. I like pecan or any other light wood, but its good on a gas grill as well.
• Place all the crabs belly side up and close the lid and cook ten minutes. Flip them belly side down and cook another ten minutes, but after five minutes keep a close eye on them. A little char is fine, but not too much.  Baste them like below, but try and do it a little more manly than how I did.

Serve them with the extra butter, boiled new potatoes, a nice loaf of french bread, and a quality cajun spice mix like Cajun Fiya. A cold lager would be great with these crabs or a nice dry Chardonnay if you dig wine. Pick and save the leftovers for a phenomenal warm crab dip, a nice pasta dish, or any number of satisfying crabby meals.