Hutzell: How not to pick a Maryland blue crab, my search for the right way

As a thousand people ate steamed crabs together in Annapolis, Dawn King sat a little off from the crowd and worked hers like a pro.

“I normally crack this part with the mallet to get the meat out,” the Randallstown woman said, pulling off a claw. “And then I’ll open this up — open the crab up — and then I break mine in half.”

It’s the familiar start to a much-loved meal, the jumping-off point of a Maryland culinary tradition.

For anyone who’s ever cracked open a rusty-red Jimmy alongside a table full of friends, there’s a kinship in technique.

Everyone in Maryland knows the right way to pick a crab, right? There is a method to it, one passed to young children and shared with first-time friends, cousins from Kentucky and inland in-laws.

“I don’t say it’s the right way,” King said.

“Well, how do you do it?” I asked.

“I’m gonna say it’s my way.”

Well, what if we’ve been doing it wrong all along?

My wife found a YouTube video about crabs and the social media host confronted my Maryland bona fides by casually demonstrating what he called the right way.

Speed picking.

Billy Pollock, a manager at Cantler’s Riverside Inn near Annapolis, has seen it. You clean the crab to the white shell inside its belly and then, with a knife or your hands, slice or break off the top.

The result is a cartilaginous tray, exposed channels filled with sweet crabmeat nuggets ready for plucking.

“A lot of people find it a lot easier to kind of get that knife in there and kind of get everything out that they need in a more solid chunk,” Pollock said.

Mary Lou Polk has never heard of this technique. The Cape St. Claire woman was seated a few tables down from King at the Annapolis Rotary Crab Feast, eating them the way her dad taught her 75 years ago.

“I pull all the fingers off, and bite the meat out of them. I don’t waste anything,” she said. “Then, I bring my own knife with me.”

No plastic utensils for her. She popped open her crab with a metal table knife, then scraped the innards away like so much inconvenient chaff.

“Then I break it in half and pick the meat out,” said Polk, her delicate fingers breaking the channels and picking out bits of backfin.

Pollock sees individual idiosyncrasies as customers make meals of blue crabs — don’t forget the corn, hush puppies and beer. But it’s all pretty much the same.

“On a Saturday, when I have, you know, 12 staff here, I could go to each one and they might show me similar ways, but with slight differences here and there,” he said.

So where did speed picking come from? It originates in Eastern Shore crab houses, where migrant workers are paid by the pound.

“We cut the tops off,” said Aubrey Vincent, owner of Lindy’s Seafood in Woolford. “We call them the tops. Then we just pick it right out.”

A skilled picker can produce 30 to 50 pounds a day and end a season earning $20,000 or more. That’s an incentive to be quick about it, rather than linger over crabs with conversation.

It can take a moment or a week to teach this method. Pickers at Lindy’s use a hook-bladed knife to better pull out the meat.

“I have some pickers who get it right away, and some take more time,” Vincent said. “It depends on individual dexterity.”

How this leaped from the picking floor to the feasting table is harder to explain.

Rob Schou lives in the tiny town of California down in St. Mary’s County, and posts social media videos about food as By The Water.

Growing up in Annapolis, he and his friend caught crabs in the South River. His friend’s dad, Roy, would cook them.

When it came to eating, the boys always beat Roy on getting to the meat first. Then Roy found a class on how to do it like professional pickers.

“Then [he] proceeds to use the new method that he learned at the community college, which is the method I use now,” Schou said.

Maryland is deep in its season of the crab.

Harvest runs to November, but the fattest and sweetest are caught between now and October. Summer will soon turn to fall, and taste buds already are shifting from a steamed dozen toward vegetable crab soups and creamy crab dishes.

“It’s the best time,” Vincent said. “Fewer people want them.”

Imported crabs taste fine, but it’s the increasingly stressed Chesapeake crustacean Maryland really wants. Without a local catch, we might as well be Pennsylvania.

Snap. At the Annapolis feast, King broke the belly of her crab in half. She scraped away the gills before pulling out squiggly bits of gut and protein.

“All of this right here, I’ll clean it out.”

She ate the mustard, popping a dollop from her thumb into her mouth. A combined liver and pancreas called the hepatopancreas, it filters toxins from whatever the crab ate before being eaten.

Cooks call this greenish-brown paste tomalley, a way to add umami to crab dishes. For the faithful and the brave, it is a briny table treat.

“It really is,” King said.

Watching tables-full of people eat their way through piles of crabs, it’s clear the right way to enjoy them isn’t a matter of style or dexterity. It’s sharing them with friends and family.

“I wouldn’t say there’s a wrong way,” said Pollock, the Cantler’s manager. “As long as you’re not getting all the shell in your meat.”