One of the first things that comes to mind when you think of Maryland is crab, yet surprisingly after spending almost two years here, last weekend was the first time I actually managed to try some. Well, yes I’ve had crab cakes and maybe some crab-containing food in the FFC but never an authentic steamed crab.
For my friend’s birthday I went to L.P. Steamers, which is a laid back seafood joint located in the Locus Point district of Baltimore. We managed to snag the last spot on the rooftop deck, which had views of the sunset, inner harbor and, sadly, a big construction project. The menu here is filled with tons of seafood options including shrimp, lobster, scallops, mussels, clams, fish and most importantly crab. Hot steamed crabs can be ordered by the dozen in sizes ranging from small to jumbo. The rest of the seafood can be ordered by the pound. We ordered the crab dip, calamari, a dozen jumbo crabs and half a pound of snow crab legs. However, since it was relatively late in the evening, they didn’t have enough jumbo crabs to fill our order, so they had to supplement it with the large-sized crabs.
The appetizers came out first, the crab dip was rich and creamy and the soft pretzel sticks provided worked well with it. The calamari was average, and strangely they provided sweet and sour sauce for dipping, as opposed to the standard cocktail sauce.
Then, finally the crabs! All twenty-four hot steamed crabs were fully intact and covered in old bay seasoning. We were also each provided with a little wooden hammer and butter. The snow crab legs were huge in comparison to the Maryland crabs and came with a special metal cracking tool to break into them.
First, I tackled the snow crab legs since I had encountered them before. A good strategy to get the meat out is to crack the leg in half at the joint, then to take the upper piece and blow air into the joint so the meat shoots out the other end. Sometimes you have to clear a bit of the exoskeleton so the meat actually comes out into your hand. This usually left me with a big unbroken chunk of meat, which is the goal when eating crab you have to break down yourself.
Then I picked up a jumbo crab and did my best to get all the meat out. I learned that you should flip it on its stomach and take out a little t-shaped section of exoskeleton. Then you can take off the whole back shell in one piece.
Under that shell there are guts which you have to remove and which can be pretty gross if your crab happened to be in the process of digesting a meal when it died. Then you just pick at the white meat in the belly under all the guts and rub it in seasoning and butter before eating it. I’m not really sure why they provided us with hammers, as banging on the outer shell with it really did not accomplish much.
The crab meat was definitely worth the struggle because it was delicious! But I would recommend not ordering everything all at once, since by the end the crab and the butter were cold and not as good. L.P. Steamers is a good spot to check out, and I’m sure there are many other great Baltimore crab spots where you can test out your shell-breaking skills.
