King Crab is the kind of food most people only eat when they’re at a fancy restaurant. Perhaps your family has taken a crucial step through the waters of Southeast Alaska. She stopped at a world-famous seafood restaurant overlooking the water and, wanting to splurge, ordered a bucket of delicious wild crab legs and a bottle of white wine to celebrate. When you’re savoring every succulent bite at this “splurge” dinner, you probably can’t imagine enjoying the same taste of luxury at home in the continental United States. This is a special occasion, a meal of a lifetime, right?
Wrong! Delicious Alaskan King Crab can not only be found in supermarkets and fish markets across the United States but is actually one of the easiest foods to prepare for home consumption. If you play your cards right, you could be eating King Crab a couple of times a month!
This is because most King Crab sold in standard US supermarkets are pre-cooked. This means you don’t have to master any Iron Chef skills to prepare it for your family or dinner guests. In fact, usually, all you have to do is thaw it and add a bit of flavor by quickly dipping it into boiling water with bay leaves or white wine or something subtle like that. You can also bake them briefly for that oven-toasted flavor.
And how exactly is Alaskan king crab served? This is even simpler. Most people enjoy theirs with butter. Just melt some butter, put it on a plate and let it soak. If you want to add herbs to the butter for something really fancy, you can choose a subtle green herb, like rosemary or bay leaf, and mix it in when the butter is hot, almost boiling. How much you put in really depends on your taste. In terms of serving utensils, if you have a simple nutcracker in your house, that should help your family or guests crack the shell.
When it comes to deciding when to prepare certain foods, time can often be a factor. A particular type of seafood, for example, perhaps in season and thus up to your craving one month, but hard to find and noticeably less tasty the next. So as a restaurant chef or stay-at-home parent, it can be difficult to rely on foods that aren’t available year-round. Leaving customers waiting for a certain type of fish unsatisfied because the dish doesn’t consistently appear on your menu can be a real deal-breaker for repeat business. Therefore, it is vital to find certain foods that are available (and delicious) throughout the year. Although Alaska king crab season only lasts part of the year, the item is available for purchase and preparation year-round.
How can you confidently list king crab-based dishes on your menu year-round if there is a specific season for Alaskan king crab? How can people trust seafood to be a part of their health-conscious diet if it’s only in season for a short amount of time? Easy: As is the case with most Alaskan seafood, king crab is available frozen year-round. While some may scoff at the idea of replacing a fresh fish with a frozen fillet, the truth is that there are dozens of recipes that use the frozen variety of the food just as effectively as its fresh counterpart. Plus, you don’t need to be farsighted or waste time waiting for fish or crab to thaw—you can cook your meal with frozen meat!
