Yeah.. baby... so you've come to Ocean City, Maryland and
you have caught those beautiful blue crabs so abundant in Assawoman
Bay, Indian River Bay, and Sinepuextent Bay.  Your crabs are
still alive and you are ready to cook them up to impress 
your friends staying at your condo and beach house.
             Dining, Crabs, Restaurants
But don't be left out knowing how to eat them...
Here are the instructions for picking those beautiful
Jimmies, otherwise known as the blue crab.

Hopefully you have thrown back the female crabs, and
all your crabs are at least five inches point to point
which is the legal limit for Maryland blue crabs, Delaware
blue crabs, and Virginia Blue Crabs.

Flip over your crab after you are done cooking it to a
beautiful bright red color (fifteen to twenty minutes
in a steamer).  If you find the meat in the claws are
very grainy and tough and sticking to the shells you
have cooked them too long.  

1.)  Locate the tab for the flap... which as everybody
likes to say, resembles the Washington Monument, long and
skinny for the male, and fat and broad for the female.
Insert your knife, and pull and rip this part off and discard
it.

2.) Insert your thumb between the top half and the bottom
half of the shell from where you just ripped of the tab-flap.
Rip off the top half of the shell from the bottom that contains
the body of the crab... set aside the top half for a moment.
There may be some fat or yellowey substance in the corners
(inside the points) of the top half.. this is eatable.
Although it may not look like it.

3.) Now we will rip off the "Devils Fingers" or lungs, which
resemble skinny looking accordions.  These are on both sides
of the body of the crab, left and right side as it were.
THROW THESE Devil Fingers away.... don't eat this part of
the crab.. Don't eat the Devils Fingers, or lungs of the crab.

4.) Placing your hands, left hand on the left side of the crab,
right hand on the right side of the crab, bend down or back 
and snap the two sides of the crab in half and separate them.

5.) Now you have two halves of the crab.. with all the legs intact
if you are smart and have done it correctly.  Now comes a slightly
tricky part, and is different for every crab.  Because crabs
molt, or shed there shells at different times in their growing
stage, the shells of the crab will have varying degrees of hardness.
And coinciding with the molting process, varying amounts of "meat"
in their shells.  A fat or heavy crab will be getting close to
going into its molting process, the shell can be very hard at this
point, and the crab will have a lot of meat in it so it can survive
the fasting stage when it is a softshell (all ready shed its hard 
shell) and developing it hard-shell and vulnerable to predators.
Usually it buries itself or deep grasses for this stage and hides.

Ok... you have one half the crab in your and hand(s) and now you
squeeze it to crack it upon itself... depending on how hard the
the shell is... is how hard you will have to squeeze it.  This will
become learned with experience... you don't want to squeeze to hard
and crush it completely... but just to crack the insides a bit.
IMPORTANT... the most delicious part of the crab is called the backfin.
The backfin of the crab may be pulled out before squeezing process..
To do this... you grab the area of the shell around the backfin,
and squeeze it as described above but just in it's specific area, bending
backwards carefully and breaking it away from the body... then
careful breaking away the bits of shell will expose the beauty of the
backfin meat so desired.

6.) One half of the body has been squeezed... now take your knife, and
between the squeezed parts cut down the centers length but not all the
way through to the back where the legs are coming in, just enough to
separate some of the parts that were broken when you squeezed before.
Now... (this is why we haven't pulled the little legs out yet)
because you have loosened up the 'innards' of the shell of the
crab.. if you are lucky, (try pulling on the little legs, at the same
time opening up more of the shell where you put the knife before)
the little legs will pull out with a bunch of meat stuck to them
from the little shell pockets you have squeezes and slightly cut
with the knife.  If gobs of meat doesn't some out with the little
legs... open up the body where you put the knife and push or
squeeze or pick out the meat in the pockets...
This is the part of the crab people consider work and tedious..
but as you become an expert and have followed the instructions here,
it won't be work at all.  You'll just be telling stories about
Uncle Fred and Bill Bob or the big one that got away...

7.)  Claws.. take your knife as shown... and hit the top of
the knife to crack the claw about 1/4 away through, grab the
claw and break it backwards, pulling the two parts away from
each other carefully, will expose the meat in the claw.  Bite
at the meat until you feel the cartilage in the middle, and
pull it off in your mouth.
Crack the rest of the joints in the claw and pick the meat out
with a knife or by squeezing it out...there is meat in the tiny
legs too if you are really ambitious.... I've taken hundreds of
these tiny claws and used the meat to make quiche out of them.
But.. don't tell anybody... cause well, you know about real men..
they eat crabs but.. aren't supposed to cook quiche.

So now you are a pro... and if you get real good... while
your buddies are getting frustrated.. you're getting nice
and full on Maryland Blue Crabs... impressing them all.