I think this is one of my most popular recipes, and it’s certainly one of my favorites. It’s a fabulous oven roasted crab, which only takes about 20 minutes to pull together—after arriving home with a few cracked and cleaned crabs. The crab is roasted in a delicious lemon-orange-shallot sauce which you eat with your fingers.

And you’ll have to lick your fingers—it’s required. Eaten this way, this crab is delicious! The only side needed is a loaf of fresh sourdough bread to mop up a bit of the sauce in the bottom of the pan. For dessert, my daughter shared her Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Simple, quick and what a memorable meal!

NOTE #1: I made my first three batches of this crab in glass 13″x9″ pans. On the fourth batch, I took one pan out of the oven, placed it on a cutting board, stepped away, and the glass dish EXPLODED! Glass EVERYWHERE, including all over the 2 crabs in the dish. The second glass dish, cooked in the same oven, was fine. But because of this potentially dangerous—and obviously very messy—situation, I would caution against using a glass (Pyrex, Anchor Hocking) pan to roast the crab.

NOTE #2: Don’t underestimate how HOT a pan gets in a 450° oven. Be careful, very, very careful when transferring the HOT pans . Use your thickest oven mitts, on both hands, to move this pan. I have had painful burns from not protecting my hands enough, and a burnt hand can really interfere with your enjoyment of a good meal.

I found this recipe on Epicurious.com,

Oven-Roasted Crab with Citrus

INGREDIENTS

For each pair of cracked and cleaned crabs:

• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 T. chopped parsley or cilantro
• 1 T. chopped fresh thyme
• ¼ c. butter
• ¼ c. olive oil
• 2 tsp. minced garlic
• 1 minced shallot
• ½ tsp. dried red pepper flakes
• ¼ c. freshly squeezed lemon juice
• ¼ c. freshly squeezed orange juice
• grated peel of 1 lemon
• grated peel of ½ orange

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 500°

1. Place pieces of each pair of crabs in a 9 by 13 inch baking dish, sprinkle with salt, pepper, parsley/cilantro, and thyme.
2. Melt butter and olive oil in a skillet. Stir in garlic, shallot and red pepper flakes. Cook for 2 minutes.
3. Pour sauce over crabs and place in a hot oven for 6 minutes.
4. Stir, shake, turn crab and then return to oven to roast for another 6 minutes.
5. Remove crab to a serving platter.
6. Pour drippings back into skillet.
7. Add ¼ cup fresh orange juice and ¼ cup fresh lemon juice, grated orange and lemon peel. Boil for 5 minutes and then pour sauce over crabs. Serve!

Definitely finger food—must lick fingers 🙂 Have towels available for wiping, and mop up sauce with bits of sourdough bread!

This was a really GOOD day to stop by my kitchen!