Boiled Or Steamed, Nothing Beats The Taste Of Crab Meat

Crab pots are a favored tool for catching crabs. The crab pot is a metal cage with four openings. The crabberputs bait into the bottom of the crab pot. This bait can be made up of such delicacies as eel, chicken necks, fish parts, or bull lips. When the crab enters the crab pot in search of the bait and can’t get back out, they float toward the top into the main portion of the crab pot. There is one difficulty with putting a metal crab pot into sea water. Sea water, which is made up of salt and uncountable other chemicals, corrodes the metal. The best way to slow this corrosion process is to attach a zinc anode. Zinc anodes slow the corrosion of the metal of the crab pot because they are “sacrificial.” This is a processknown as galvanic corrosion. The metal of the crab pot and the zinc corrode at a slow rate of speed. However, when the two metals are put together in the sea water, something strange happens. The two materials form a galvanic couple. The zinc acts as the anode, and the other metal acts as the cathode. The effect on the rate of corrosion is that the zinc corrodes faster than it normally would, and the crab pot corrodes at a slower rate. Thus the crab pot has a longer life than it would without the galvanic corrosion.

All of this information is useful to all crabbers, whether professional or recreational. In Maryland, it is legal for waterfront property owners to place no more than two crab pots into the water without day or time restrictions. If more than two are desired, a professional license is required.

Crabbing can be the high point of a family vacation and a source of lifetime memories. The crab pot is a good choice for this activity because they don’t need to be checked constantly. If the crab pot is put into the water in the morning, it can be retrieved in the afternoon. The main thing to remember is that the crabs will eat the bait in the crab pot and then become hungry. If they are not taken out of the crab pot at the end of the day, they will die.

But the joy of crabbing is not in the catching; it’s in the eating. Eating a crab is an esthetic experience for a number of reasons. First of all is the heavenly flavor of freshly caught and cooked crab meat. Dipped in butter, its light, delicate taste is good by itself. Next, eating a whole crab is a tactile experience. It calls up the caveperson in the eater as the legs and other body parts are cracked open in search of the delicate meat.

The easiest way to cook the crabs is by either steaming or boiling. If steaming the crabs, you need a large pot with a rack and a tight-fitting lid. The crabs can be steamed for 25 to 30 minutes. If boiling the crabs, just boil them for about 15 minutes.

Connor Sullivan has recently researched the use of a zinc anode in order to help cool the trap down due to the electrolysis in the water. He used zinc anodes to develop a new product.