It’s crab time in Oregon. That means we’ll be seeing more Dungeness crabs in the market and in local restaurants, according to Nick Furman, director of marketing for the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission, who was in Chicago last week to promote his products at Shaw’s Crabhouse, 21 W. Hubbard St.
This is the peak season for those large, sweet crabs, though harvesting continues through August off the Pacific Northwest coast.
If you’d like to try cooking up a Dungeness, do as the Oregonians do and try a crab feed. Invite guests, lay out newspaper as a tablecloth and boil up the crabs.
“There are two kinds of crab eaters: the pickers and the pilers,” explained Janie Hibler, author of “Dungeness Crabs and Blackberry Cobblers,” a cookbook featuring Northwest foods. The pickers extract and eat one bite of crab at a time, while the pilers pick all the crab out of the shell, pile the meat up and then eat, said Hibler, who helped Furman “crack the mystique” of Dungeness.
Traditional crab feed side dishes include cole slaw, sourdough bread, plain lemon for the crab or melted butter.