When I was a kid we would go to a dock someplace in Annapolis and catch crabs. We used traps and chicken necks. Yes, we were chicken neckers. That is now a derogatory term.
We would bring them home and steam them, always adding beer to the water. I always felt sorry for the crabs, but I still ate them :-)

Tell Sam not to worry. I've done troutlining, the ever fun walk along the pier with a crab net, and the even better walk down to the pier and pull up the crabpots for lunch. We certainly didn't get up crazy early for them though. It was more just a way to pass the time down on the banks of the Wicomico in St. Marys during summer break.

As for soft crab's - I don't know if they're still doing it, but last week Jack's had a tempora encrusted soft crab served with panko crusted rice balls containing just a hint of duck confit served with a side of 3 sauces. Completely non traditional, but quite tasty.

I was away part of this week, but what about the review of "Attack of the Crab Monsters"? Did I miss it?

Tomorrow. I don't want to use up all the exciting features at once. EL

Way back when, my grandparents had a house at VA Beach, so I was a chicken necker there. My grandmother would cook the crabs that night; we always loved them.

As for soft crabs..GACK! The texture of the not-quite-a-shell just doesn't work for me. And..its seems like a bad compromise. Give 'em to me either steamed and whole, or finish the job and give me crabcakes.

I'm not a native Marylander, so that may be part of it, but I just can't eat soft crabs. I had a soft crab sandwich a couple years ago and seeing the legs sticking out was just too much for me to handle. My gag reflex kicked in. Sure, I can crack them open and pull the lungs out and such, but eating the whole thing, legs attached, just makes me squeamish. It's a flaw, I suppose.

A few months back, I had some absolutely huge soft shells at By the Docks on Eastern Ave. There were two of them on a platter, legs dangling over the side - wow, nothing better! As far those who can't stand the sight of the legs and shell, all I can say is, more for me!

My father-in-law was from central Ohio, and one time we went to dinner and I had soft shells. Next time he was in town he asked about them, so I picked some up from the seafood shop and cooked them up for him. After that, he never wanted anything else for dinner when he visited, no matter what time of year!

Soft shelled crabs, mmmmmmm. The bigger the better. Captain Dan's in Eldersburg does a superb job with the big guys (whales) when they're in season!

Someone asked, on an earlier thread, for a crab fluff recipe. Here's one, with a couple of caveats.
I have never tried this recipe so can't vouch for it. Second, it comes from an old seafood book published by the state in 1982, so it's probably very traditional, which can be good or bad by today's standards. My crab cake recipe originated from this series, but I had to adjust it with drastic reductions in the mayonnaise and bread crumbs.
Start with crab balls.
1 lb. Maryland crab meat
1/2 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
1 large or two small eggs
About 1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
Remove all cartilage from crab meat and place in a medium bowl. In another bowl, mix bread crumbs, egg, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt and pepper. Pour mixture over crab meat and mix gently but thoroughly. If mixture is too dry, add a little more mayonnaise. Shape into 12 balls about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.

Crab fluff.
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp.seafood seasoning
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. celery seed
1/4 tsp. lemon and pepper seasoning
2 eggs
2 tsp. mayonnaise
1/4 tsp. mustard
About 1 cup milk
Crab balls
Margarine, butter or oil for frying
In large bowl mix flour, baking powder, seafood seasoning, salt, celery seed and lemon and pepper seasoning.
In small bowl beat eggs; mix in mustard and mayonnaise.
Add egg mixture to flour mixture. Slowly stir in milk until batter is consistency of medium pancake batter.
Coast crab balls one at a time with batter and drop gently into hot fat (350 F). Cook until brown; remove and drain. Coat balls again and cook in fat until golden brown on all sides. Remove and drain. Serve immediately.

There's NOTHING better than soft crabs! All you "gack-ers" can just leave em alone...more for me! Now that I'm drooling, I'll head on up to Conrad's this weekend and get a couple to saute in butter & garlic oil with a little minced tarragon and lemon juice--yummmmmm!

Ah, soft crabs. Head to the Baltimore Farmer's Market first thing Sunday morning for some fresh soft crabs. Home to clean them then sautee in some butter with Old Bay (nothing else), and serve them on a plate. Breakfast, Baltimore-style!!!

Oh, I love soft shell crabs! I'm really not one for fried seafood, so I tend to grill my soft shells and baste them with a little butter and a sprinkling of Old Bay.

I'm so lucky because I am the only person in my house that likes them. That means I know I don't have to share!

Well, as a native Marylander, I grew up in a home where my mother cooked soft shells pretty often. No frozen specimen, only fresh from Lexington Market. I could not bring myself to touch them. Then sometime in my thirties I came to my senses and tried them. They have ever since been among my favorite foods.

My problem is that short of having them in a sandwich on buttered white bread and no other additions; or, as shushi rolls, I have never had a soft shell in a restaurant that wowwed me.
I would love suggestions of places that do a good job with soft shells?

As to crabbing. My husband and I throw a trap in the water with a chicken neck or two whenever we have a chance to sit on a pier.

Susan WNAJ: Why is chicken neckers considered a derogatory term? Does it refer to something besides people who catch crabs with chicken necks?

When I was a kid, my grandmother lived in Sherwood Forest in Annapolis. We used to crab off the main pier there, with chicken necks and string. I only remember catching enough to steam a handful of times. But man, it was fun times for a kid.

So besides the over-the-dock chicken neckers, do we have any serious crabbers?

I had friends and family with boats, so a couple times a year growing up I would get up early early, load the boat, either drop pots or run trout line out in the river. On a good day we'd catch a couple bushels, maybe sell one or two to a restaurant and then go home and steam the rest.

Crabs taste so much better when you've caught them yourself.

Anonymous: Chicken necker is a derogatory term used by natives of the Eastern Shore for those of us who intrude on their turf. Presumably it contrasts us from the real crabbers who employ trot lines or traps.

Just tried the Born on the Bay-O Salad at Miss Shirley's today. Cornmeal-Encrusted Soft Shell Crab (with crunchy little legs), Fried Green Tomatoes, Goat Cheese, Red Onion, Tomatoes, Chives, Roasted Corn & Applewood-Smoked Bacon on Greens with Creamy Smoked Tomato Vinaigrette. Still full four hours later!

Chicken Necker was/is a term commercial crabbers used to refer to recreational crabbers. We use to always use salted eel(hate to think what that would cost toiday.)
As for soft crabs, nothin will ever replace scoopin a doubler off a piling,.Running it up to the house,grab a ripe tomato outta the garden on the way, hand the softcrab to Mom and by the time I washed up, got a glass of ice tea, washed and sliced the tomato, Mom had cleaned, dredged seasoned and had the softcrab half
done.A little mayo,tomato,letttuce on slices of Rice's plain ole white bread....no restaurant comes close

A trip down Memory Lane:

The best soft shells I can remember came from the old Pimlico Hotel.

Does anybody else remember when Danny's used to put up the sign that said The Whales Are In [or something to that effect]?

bra1nchild: My first week in Mob town years ago I saw the sign at Danny's "We serve WHALES". I thought-these people are barbarians. Though I grew up in Jersey I always loved soft shells. My favorite MD dish use to be two sost shells STUFFED with crab imperial at the old Angelina's. Heaven.
I use to be a chicken necker on West Point Island near Lavalette in Jersey. More sketters per square foot than anywhere north of the Everglades.

I was in a townie bar in Rock Hall a few years ago, and one of locals was all bent on making sure that I accept the chicken neckker moniker.

I've lived in Baltimore all of my life.

I don't do softshells.

If I order a crabcake and I get even the tiniest shell, I won't ever order it from that restaurant again. Probably why there's only two places I'll get a crabcake. Same goes for crab dip or a crab pretzel. I don't mind shells when I'm picking them, but nothing irks me more than biting into what is supposed to be full lump meat and getting a shell.

When we get steamed crabs and I get sick of eating them, I pick the meat for my dogs. They're Baltimore dogs, what can I say.

Love crab soup, but it's never spicy enough for me. Always add more Old Bay. Which BTW, is awesome on corn, on the grill, with olive oil.

Soft Crabs, you either love them or hate them.

I remember the first time I tasted one. I had an initial sensation of bitter and then the sweet/saltiness took over and I was hooked. Perhaps for some, the bitterness stays.

Of course this doesn't address the problem of the people who think it just looks horrifying. I guess it did at first to me, but I got over it, thankfully.

Good memories. My grandfather used to do all of his crabbing off his pier in Epping Forest. I think he went every day in the summer.

As for softshells, I also didn't start eating them until I was a little older. When I was a kid, they freaked me out. Fortunately, I got over it.

I've had a couple of good ones lately. A few weeks ago, the special at Les Folies in Annapolis was softshells over mixed greens - it was excellent. And one of my favorite Friday night Belvedere Square meals is the tempura softshell from the Ikan seafood stand. Who doesn't love everything tempura?

Carey -

I love Old Bay on the corn, too. We put it in the pot if we're steaming our own crabs.

Otherwise, we grill them and use a nice fresh-cut rosemary stick to mop them with a combination of olive oil, melted butter. We get a nice light rosemary essence on the corn this way.

If the rosemary isn't available, we add Old Bay to the olive oil/melted butter and toss the corn in a big bowl with the mixture. Yummm.

I can't wait for local corn!

Hey Robert- "Chicken Necker" is also a reference for someone from the Western Shore (west of the Bay Bridge). Don't take it personally.

Just a note to all those folks who can't stand soft shells. I had a colleague years ago who was a field anthropologist and often bragged about how he could go to any culture on earth and eat whatever was included in their diet without any reluctance. Then I took him to a great Annapolis restaurant for soft-shell crabs and he ran for the rest room... Sigh. He never bragged again--at least not in my presence!

I just recommended Gertrude's for their Maryland Crab Soup, but I have to recommend them again for their softshells, just dusted with cornmeal and fried. Very fresh, delicious, and non-greasy.

A co-worker once gave me a softshell recipe with cornmeal and bacon, it was really good, but I've lost it. Does anyone make their softshells like that?
BTW, I like Old Bay on corn too - and on fish and fried chicken!

Not sure where to post this one, but I had the ("freshly made") crab cake sandwich special at Chef Paulino's downtown today in a rushed-lunch tribute to crab week, and expected it to be terrible at $6.95, given that it is an italian place. But it was actually relatively fine - i saw some lumps, no huge lumps like you see at finer places, but wow, it sure tasted good, and tasted like crab.

no huge lumps like you see at finer places

Some of those "finer" places use huge lumps of relatively tasteless Asian crabmeat.

In my opinion (which is obviously not popular nowadays), size of the lumps is not the most important aspect of a crab cake.

Hal, VoR, come back, hon! You still have fans! You weren't tagged the "voice for reason" for no reason at all.

Dahlink, when I said "In my opinion (which is obviously not popular nowadays)" I was just referring to my opinion that the size of the lumps isn't the most important criterion.

I didn't think anyone around here was particularly annoyed by me, except, apparently, for Owl Meat, whose feelings I seem to have hurt (I didn't think that was possible).

That last sentence has way too many commas in it. At least there are no exclamation points.

We all have feelings, even OMG/Voodoo Pork/Amanda/Chino--and whoever else dwells within.

Chicken necks.

As a kid, we'd get up at 3am, pile in the wagon and drive from Hamilton down to the Wye River. Get a boat and be out on the river at sunrise to catch crabs. It was a lot of fun, when you figured out how to catch them with a net when they would swim close enough to the surface. We used chicken necks on a string.

Apparently you can add the crab cake @ Charm City Seafood at Camden Yards to the mix:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/travel/08baseball.html?pagewanted=3

(scroll down, it's near the end of the article)

Apparently it was the worst thing he ate in a ballpark while researching the story.

I've crabbed on a trot line with chicken necks I've crabbed off of a pier with chicken necks and I've caught quite a few whilst fishing for flounder (squid). Maryland Steamed Crabs are the BEST, I've even had soft shell sandwich (but I have to pull off the tootsies, that is just creepy. A light Maryland Crab is better than ANY Asian crab meat bar none. Maryland is the ONLY state that does it right. I'm getting me some crabs this weekend. Sonny's on Holabird!

crab savvy, the "flounder (squid)" reference has me puzzeled. Huh?