The best-known and marketed hairy crabs are from Yangcheng Lake in neighboring Jiangsu Province. They mature between October and November after which they are harvested.
Crabs from the eastern part of the lake are said to be the best, with golden leg hair and a unique ID number tagged on a pincer.
In addition to Yangcheng Lake, Shanghai's Chongming Island is also famous for its hairy crabs which are not as heavily marketed as Yangcheng Lake crabs but tasty just the same.
Crustacean gourmands also love to barbecue crabs for the different flavor it produces. Digging into the crab Although there are special hairy crab tools for foodies to winkle the sweet meat from every corner of the creature's shell, here is a six-step procedure to help everyone become a crab conqueror.
Step 1
Break off the crab's two pincers and eight legs and leave them for the last dig. The flesh of the legs and pincers will separate from the shell after cooling down. Step 2
Rip off the white belly. Female and male crabs have different belly shapes ?? a female has a bigger, round belly while males have guard-shaped, smaller bellies.
Step 3
Open the shell from where the belly was ripped. Now you can start to eat. Taste the roe or gao in the shell, the gold and priciest part of a crab. Be careful with the stomach in the middle of the shell, just beneath the triangle section of the shell. Both the stomach and the triangle are not edible.
Step 4
Now comes the body. Rip off the crab mouth, the gills and the lungs. These are the dirtiest parts of the crab as they are the organs a crab uses to filter water and the place where bacteria gathers. Remove the hexagonal heart in the middle of the body. It is not edible, either. Put a little sauce on the body and then suck off the roe or gao.
Step 5
Crack the crab in half and slabs of juicy flesh appear which can be easily slurped out.
Step 6
Snap the legs into three parts. The end of the leg can be used as a tool to push the flesh out of the other two sections. Crack the pincers into three. Use the leg end to push the meat out of the two upper parts.
