Species sheet · The Edible Ocean
brown crab
The sleeper crab, and there is nothing sleepy about it when you catch one.
- Boiled whole in court-bouillon
- Picked into a salad with mayonnaise
- The claws just warm with butter
- In French
- Tourteau
- Scientific name
- Cancer pagurus
- In the water
- Benthic; from 0 to 200 m, mostly 6 to 40 m; rocky and sandy bottoms.
- Season & buying
- Best from May through October, peaking in summer and early autumn when the meat fills the shell; heft it in your hand, a light crab feels hollow, a sign it has just moulted.
- Common length
- ~20 cm
- How to identify it
- Oval shell with a pie-crust edge
Red-brown, black-tipped claws
A broad oval, much wider than long
On the plate
Fine white meat in the claws, brown and powerful in the body.
Avoid: Boiling it alive: it sheds its legs in panic, kill it first.
A female carries up to three million eggs under her abdomen for eight months, without eating, buried in the sand.
In Umay recipes
3 Umay recipes call for it.
