Day eighty nine

Our crab

What is the meat/shell ratio in a crab?

Today was a Crustaceans day. Each of us had lobster and crab. We had crayfish for the group and one guy cooked it in Louisiana style (with tomatoes, onion, garlic, paprica, a touch of cayenne). It was really tasty.

Lobster was easy. It has just two claws and a tail where meat is located. What I did not do is to skewer live lobster, so when you cook it the tail is not curve. May be it was my first lobster... I can imagine to put it in a boiling water (what I did), or stub it with my knife... But to skewer it first is not what I want to do. There is another way to avoid curving,
but you will need two tails (only tails). Before cooking them, tie them together in the opposite direction. This way they will cook nicely straight.

With a crab it was first time experience for me. I have had crab meat from a can before. Once I have crab at a restaurant, it was cleaned for me, with claws partially broken for easy extraction of meat. Today I did everything starting from boiling it, then separating claws from body, then cleaning body (disgusting job), and finally extracting meat from the body and  claws.

Lobster of the day, this guy is quite active...

For a crab I did yield test. So I weighted it before cooking and it was one pound 10 ounces. Then I weighted meat I was able to extract and it was 6.9 ounces. So my yield was 26.53%. This yield is close to an average. What does it mean? That basically, when you buy crab let's say 1 pound weight, you will get about 4 ounces meat at the end. About 12 ounces from a  pound will go to a garbage (shells, intestine).

Today I had my first fight with purchasing people. They are (except for one) so arrogant and not respectful. They gave me two bags of shrimp, one was marked as two pounds and another one was without any signs. They were very similar for me in sizes, but the guy stated that one is two pounds and the other is 5 pounds. All I asked is to weight it, and he asked me to leave in a very rude way. I have informed my chef and he sent e-mail to purchasing with cc to the Dean, because this is not the first complain about these people. This is a mystery about some people, they hate their job and continue to work...