King Crab on the Kamado Joe

[KamadoSimon]

Inspired by the last posting about cooking a Spider Crab on a BBQ (viewtopic.php?f=34&t=1963), we managed to get a live King Crab for cooking. Seriously big....! But we got a huge amount of meat from this guy - enough for two hungry people for a main meal plus all the brown meat & some white left over to do something else with at a later date.

So, after placing in the freezer for a while & then dispatching with a knife through the flaps on the underside, it was coated in a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice & parsley. Which didn't make any difference to the flavour at all!

We cooked the Focaccia first - 500-600F for 10 minutes or so. Then removed the baking stones, shut the vents up a little, placed the grill on & let the temperature fall to about 400-450F. Then on went the crab for 5 minutes each side.

Lesson for next time is remove the smaller legs from the body & cook these for much less time - whilst not a lot of meat in these, it is meant to be really flavour-some. Ours were way over-cooked & wasted. Fortunately the claws are so big that they were cooked at the same time as the main body.

After coming off the BBQ, using a tea towel because a) it was hot and b) these suckers have really sharp things on their legs, we removed legs & claws before cutting the body down the middle to get at the deadmen's fingers & the meat (see linked thread above). A meat mallet & strong knife made easy work of this even given the really strong shells. Another lesson would be to try & prise the top crab shell from the body in one whole next time - apparently this is fairly easy to do.

Deadmens' fingers are not poisonous - but they are not very nice to eat & given the job they do (filtering the water) may contain nasties. But they are really easy to spot & remove - this was our first time killing & eating a crab & we found it easy.

We had this with some marie rose sauce, a little salad & some home-cooked focaccia (and a cheeky glass or two of a decent white wine):

Focaccia prior to baking:


Focaccia after baking:


King Crab in plastic tub:


King Crab on chopping board ready to be cooked:


King crab claw versus hand:


King Crab on Kamado Joe BBQ:

[keith157]

That's one large crab

[JEC]

Nice I especially like the focaccia any chance you could stick your recipe for that up, always like trying different ones out

[KamadoSimon]

Sure - my wife was making pizza for the children & made the dough to this pizza dough recipe: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pizz ... izza-dough

We then used the remainder for the focaccia. In addition to this recipe, whilst the dough was sat on the side & shaped ready for the bake, we:

- used three fingers to roughly create the impressions;
- sprinkled sea salt granules over the top as well as finely chopped rosemary, making sure to get plenty in the indentations;
- just before cooking drizzled olive oil all over, again making sure to get plenty into the indentations.

I love sea salt with bread - but given that the dough wasn't particularly salty, sprinkling it over the top more than made up for it.

This dough freezes really well too - after the prove & first knock-back - which is great for weekday pizzas or bakes.

[JEC]

Thanks, I've tried the JO recipe before but had forgotten about it