From the Kitchen
December 2012
From Corporate Chef, Chandon Clenard
Dungeness Crab Season is here!
In the Bay Area, December is all about Dungeness crab. To celebrate the season, we have a new menu with some classic Pacific Catch favorites as well as a few new items.
Most San Franciscans are fairly knowledgeable about Dungeness crab, but here are a few things you may not know about Metacarcinus magister (formerly Cancer magister):
- Dungeness crabs are a Pacific crab, living along the West coast from Santa Barbara, California to as far north as the Aleutian Islands. They have been found as far south as Baja, Mexico.
- Their name comes from a popular Fishing village in Dungeness, Washington. “Dungeness” refers to the Dungeness headland in England. The name was given by George Vancouver in 1792, who wrote: “The low sandy point of land, which from its great resemblance to Dungeness in this British Channel, I called New Dungeness.”
- About ¼ of their body weight is meat.
- Crab counts and price negotiations can delay crab season. Last year, it took several days for fishermen and processors to reach an agreed-upon price. We then saw a record-breaking season with fisherman unloading over 32 million pounds of crab.
- How to determine the sex of a crab: The Department of Fish and Game prohibits harvesting female crabs, which are smaller and have different ribbing on the stomach. The males have a shell width of at least 6 1/2 inches. Here is an interesting read on crab sex from the book, “Between Pacific Tides;” it is based on research originally done by the Oregon Fish Commission.
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