Quick and Simple Tips for Cleaning Crab and Shellfish

In the scorching summer days, seafood dishes are always the top choice for housewives. Crabs and snails are especially favored ingredients for mothers to prepare delicious and nutritious meals for the family, helping to cool down in the summer heat. However, you also know that it is not easy to cook dishes made from these ingredients. This is because crabs and snails are not easy to clean. Here are some tips to clean crabs and snails that will help you solve these concerns.

1. For crabs

When you bring crabs home, it is best to cook them right away. If left for too long, crabs are difficult to preserve as they die quickly. Dealing with crabs can be dangerous because they have sharp claws, which can cause injuries to your hands.

If your crab is tied up with string, leave it as it is and use your hand to flip the apron under its belly, using a sharp object to poke into the groove under its belly until the legs and crab claws straighten out, then you can remove the apron and the soft roe outside the apron (if any).

At this point, you can remove all the remaining strings, use a brush to scrub the crab clean, and then put it in a pot to boil with cold water. When it is cooked, boil it for a few minutes, then take the crab out immediately to retain its sweet taste and firm texture.

Tips for cooking crabs:

There are many ways to make delicious crab dishes. You can stir-fry them with tamarind sauce, garlic, or stir-fried with glass noodles,… or you can cook them in soup, cook with glass noodles, steam them and eat with salted chili. When cooking crabs, you should use few spices to preserve the delicious flavor of the meat.

Note: For field crabs, when you crush them, you should put a little salt in the mortar to prevent pieces of shell and crab claws from splashing on you.

2. For snails

Snails often have a slimy substance and contain a lot of mud. Here are some tips to remove impurities to make the dish tasty when cooking snails.

Method 1. Soaking snails in a metal basin

Snails will release mud very quickly when they smell the metal. Therefore, you need to soak the snails in a metal basin or pot filled with water, and add other metal utensils such as knives, spoons, forks, and chopsticks. When the snails come into contact with these metal objects for less than 3 hours, they will release all the mud.

Method 2. Using rice washing water

For people in rural areas, the best way to remove slimy substances and mud in snails is rice washing water. Use a basin filled with rice washing water and soak the snails for about 1-2 hours, all the mud inside the snails will automatically be released and clump together. Just rinse them with clean water, and you will have clean snails to cook delicious dishes.

Method 3. Use condiments such as vinegar, lime, and chili

If you are busy and want to shorten the time to clean snails, you should use water mixed with vinegar, lime, or chili powder. All these condiments help the snails release all the mud and slime quickly and cleanly.

Method 4. Parboiling snails with fermented rice

Mix a proper amount of fermented rice evenly with the snails and boil them. The sour taste of the fermented rice will help the snails release all the mud and eliminate the fishy smell.

Snail recipe:

You can cook a variety of delicious and nutritious dishes from snails such as boiled snails, stir-fried snails with lemongrass and chili, steamed snails with banana, you can also make snail cake, snail noodles,… which are beloved dishes by many people.

Note: When boiling snails, you should put a few leaves of lime, ginger, or crushed lemongrass at the bottom, and then pour the snails on top. The fragrant aroma of these spices will make the snails not fishy and have a delicious smell.

Wish you have delicious meals made from crabs and snails!