Dungeness Crab Fest

I love crab. Growing up in California, whenever we had crab, it was usually the Dungeness variety. Though I won't turn down their blue, king, and soft-shell cousins, I'm generally used to these guys, which are bountiful on the West coast of North America.

Lately they've been on sale between $1.99-$2.99 a pound, and at around 2 pounds each, these guys make for a tasty meal. I've had them fried and sauteed with garlic and scallions, but the easiest way is just to steam or boil them. My brother and I decided to host dinner one night and we stopped by our local Chinese supermarket to pick up some crabs. A lot of supermarkets have a policy where they won't tell you the price over the phone so that you can't shop around, and instead will just head in and pay whatever their market price is.

I've never thought about how to go about killing a crab, until a friend brought up the topic of 'humanely killing' one the other day. As a kid I was just used to throwing them in a pot or a steamer. As far as I can recall, I don't remember them screaming either. However, a quick search renders some interesting methods of dispatching a crab. This video shows how to kill a crab 'humanely' by pulling it's shell/head off. Quite frankly, if someone were to rip my head off,  I wouldn't find it humane at all, but who knows. On a Chowhound thread, people recommend stabbing the crab in its ventral nerve cord on its underside.

Scientifically speaking crabs are invertebrates, so they don't have a nervous system. Therefore, they don't have the ability to feel pain. I think that those who want to stab them or freeze them prior to cooking are just trying to feel less bad about it. But here's my nerd logic. Crabs belong to the arthropod phylum, subphylum crustacea. They bear a strong resemblance to their cousins, who are also arthropods, subphylum chelicerata-arachnida, aka spiders. I hate spiders and would throw my shoe at one given the opportunity. This is more than enough reason to throw a crab into a boiling pot, other than it being tasty.