RecipesCharles Sieg

Crab Legs

Crab legs baked under foil in a pan of butter, Old Bay, and garlic powder, then dipped in the sauce they cooked in.

Crab Legs: Clusters of snow crab legs glistening with melted butter and dusted with rust-red seafood seasoning, piled in a large aluminum foil roasting pan with seasoned butter pooled at the bottom
Oven
375°F
Total time
40min
servings
4

Method

A line, step, tool, or note tagged Filled in was added by the editor because the original left it out.

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Melt a stick of butter in the microwave and drizzle it all over the bottom of the pan.
  3. Sprinkle in Old Bay.
  4. Sprinkle in the garlic powder.
  5. Wash the crab legs. Do not dry them.
  6. Place crab legs in pan.
  7. Melt another stick of butter and drizzle it over the crab legs.
  8. Sprinkle Old Bay over the crab legs.
  9. Sprinkle garlic powder over the crab legs.
  10. Cover tightly with tin foil.
  11. Place pan in oven for 25 minutes.

Notes

Serving

  • Instead of supplying each diner with individual butter, encourage them to dip the crab into the butter sauce at bottom of pan.

Tips

  • If potatoes, corn, etc, are desired, cook them separately and add to the pan when the crab legs are added. Cover in butter mixture also. Adjust cooking time to account for the 25 minutes that they will be cooking along with the legs.
  • The original doesn’t say how much crab. Everything here is figured for 4 pounds of legs, about a pound a person in the shell.
    Filled in
  • Ghee is on the list, but no step uses it. If you want it, melt some for dipping at the table; otherwise the pan butter does the job.
    Filled in
  • Thaw frozen legs before they go in the pan. The FDA’s safe ways to thaw are in the refrigerator, in cold water, or in the microwave, never on the counter.
    Filled in

Safety

  • Crab legs from the store are often cooked before they are frozen, so the oven is only reheating them. Check the package. If yours are raw, the federal chart, as University of Maine Cooperative Extension publishes it, says shellfish is done when the flesh is milky white and no longer see-through.
    Filled in

Nutrition Facts

4 servings per recipe

Serving sizeabout 1 pound of legs, in the shell

Amount per serving

Calories470

% Daily Value*

  • Total Fat 26g33%
  • Saturated Fat 15g75%
  • Trans Fat 0g
  • Cholesterol 220mg73%
  • Sodium 1,570mg68%
  • Total Carbohydrate 1g0%
  • Dietary Fiber 0g0%
  • Total Sugars 0g
  • Includes 0g Added Sugars0%
  • Protein 54g
  • Vitamin D 0mcg0%
  • Calcium 80mg6%
  • Iron 6.6mg35%
  • Potassium 480mg10%

* The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

How this label was figured
Ingredient lineCountedUSDA foodNote
4 lb. crab legs907 gCrustaceans, crab, queen, cooked, moist heatHalf of its weight is counted as edible.
2 sticks of butter, Plugra113 gButter, without saltHalf of it is counted as eaten.
Old Baynot countedThe USDA data has no entry for it.
Garlic powder6.2 gSpices, garlic powderFigured at 2 tsp.
Ghee (clarified butter)not countedOptional, so it is not counted.
  • The crab is figured as snow crab, with half of the weight of the legs counted as meat. Shells vary, so that half is an estimate.
  • Half of the butter is counted as eaten; the rest stays in the pan.
  • Old Bay is not counted, because the USDA data has no entry for it. It contains celery salt, so the real sodium is higher than the label says.
  • The USDA lists no trans fat for crab legs or butter, so that line counts none from them.
  • The USDA lists no vitamin D for crab legs, so that line counts none from it.

Old Bay’s Baltimore story

The seasoning on these crab legs was blended by a refugee spice merchant across the street from Baltimore’s wholesale fish market.

Old Bay was created by Gustav Brunn, a Jewish spice merchant who escaped Nazi Germany. Baltimore Heritage tells it this way: he was taken after Kristallnacht in November 1938 and sent to Buchenwald, his family paid a lawyer to get him released, and he left with a hand-crank spice grinder. The family arrived in Baltimore in 1939.

He found work at McCormick and, by the same account, was fired for being Jewish. So he started the Baltimore Spice Company at 26 Market Place, directly across from the Wholesale Fish Market, where the crab steamers came to buy spices and blend their own. He made a blend for them.

His son remembered it as luck: “Those minor things he put in there — the most unlikely things, including cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and all kinds of stuff that had nothing to do with crabs at all — gave a background bouquet that he couldn’t have anticipated. Old Bay, per se, was almost an accident.”

The name comes from the Old Bay Line, the nickname of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, whose passenger ships ran from Baltimore to Norfolk, Virginia. Before that, the blend was sold as Delicious Brand Shrimp and Crab Seasoning. In 1990 McCormick bought the rights to the Old Bay brand, and it describes it today as a blend of 18 herbs and spices.

The crab has its own surprise: it is often cooked before it reaches the store. Royal Greenland says most of its Canadian snow crab is sold fully cooked, with the clusters cooked in fresh water, cooled, and brine frozen, and UniSea, a processor in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, describes its clusters as cooked, cooled, and brine frozen. For crab like that, the 25 minutes in this recipe reheats it in its butter; it does not cook it from raw.

Sources

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