Hello everyone, Olga is with you as always, perhaps you will need information for storing food and various things and I will tell you about How to buy crab, canned crab, crab sticks and not regret it. Maybe some details may differ, as was the case with you. Attention, always read the instructions of the things you buy for cleaning the house or the chemicals that help to store them. I answer the simplest questions. Write your questions/wishes and secrets in the comments, and together we will improve and supplement the quality of the material provided.
How to buy boiled-frozen peeled phalanges
Low percentage of waste. The ability to visually determine the quality of meat by color and volume. And an undoubted advantage: when frozen individually, you can buy the required amount of crab meat.
Phalanxes are appetizing, attractive in appearance, and you don’t have to be fancy with them, but simply serve them as an independent dish with a suitable sauce. The simplest and yet excellent: a mixture of melted butter and a few drops of Tabasco sauce. Or you can simply sprinkle the crab with lemon juice, but this is not for everyone.
High cost of the product. When individually frozen, a large amount of ice glaze usually occurs (in some cases up to 50%). With block freezing, you will have to buy a kilogram or more of an expensive delicacy at once.
Serving crab phalanges in a restaurant
How to choose
Do you use expired food for cooking at home?
Yes, the main thing is to process it if it is meat or expired kefir for pancakes.
27.04%
No, it is very dangerous and not useful.
37.6%
If the products have fungus or mold, then we throw them away; if they are a couple of days past their expiration date, we use them for food, even without heat or other treatment.
35.36%
Voted: 1694
Pay attention to compliance with the temperature regime (no excess glazing), shelf life and color saturation (ideal - red or deep pink). Size is also important, since often the less expensive second phalanx is passed off as the first.
Kamchatka crab is one of the main Russian delicacies. It is certainly delicious and also undeniably expensive, but you can afford to buy it for the New Year. We talked with Oleg Gugunava, the owner of Captain Seledkin's Fish Shop , how to buy crab correctly, what you need to pay attention to when buying and how not to waste money.
Whole crabs are sold live or boiled and frozen. On sale there are also boiled-frozen claws, peeled phalanges, boiled-frozen salad meat, plus, of course, canned food and crab sticks, which have nothing to do with crabs (only the name).
How to buy boiled frozen crab meat for salads
Zero percent waste of a product that does not require extreme care. Great for partial use: A frozen block of crab meat can be cut into pieces and used as needed. The product is convenient to store and transport.
It is impossible to visually determine the quality of the product and the ratio of meat to liquid in a frozen block. The taste also suffers - it becomes less pronounced.
How to choose
Even when frozen, crab meat should smell like crab - pleasant and slightly sweet. To check the quality of the product before completely defrosting, remove thin shavings from the edge of the briquette with a paring knife. Warm it between your fingers and try it. It must be the same crab.
How to buy boiled frozen crab limbs
A small percentage of waste compared to a whole crab. The ability to visually assess the quality of meat.
It is difficult to determine the percentage of meat filling in the phalanges. The voids can be filled with ice. Since the limbs are quite long, such a product is inconvenient to store and transport.
High quality fresh crab limbs
How to choose
Where the limbs attach to the cephalothorax, the meat should be light in color. In crab that has been stored for a long time, it is gray and dried fibers may be visible. At the same time, the chitinous shell loses its brightness, and due to loss of moisture, weight decreases.
The ice glaze of boiled-frozen limbs should be minimal and should not come off when lightly tapped. The weight of the product is simply bound to pleasantly surprise.
Ask the seller to break off the claw from the phalanx and defrost it in your hand, clenching it in a fist. The meat should be juicy and have a pleasant smell. Dry claw – dry phalanges.
How to choose
Crabs are a universally recognized delicacy; they are not available everywhere, and they cost a lot. For this reason, when starting work, you need to figure out how to cook crab so as not to spoil the product and enjoy its tender meat. First of all, you should establish how much to process a component in a particular case. For example, if only claws are boiled, then 10 minutes .
How to choose
When purchasing these crustaceans alive, the most active individuals are selected.
- Live crabs should be stored in a cool place. They are placed in a bag with holes (it should not be tightly closed either) and kept at a temperature of +4°C -+6°C in the vegetable compartment of the refrigerator for 2 – 3 days.
- Crustaceans feel most comfortable in cool, salted water. Water is poured into a plastic container to a depth of 2–3 cm, after which living individuals are placed there. The container is kept in the coolest place in the room.
The crab does not have to be entirely in the water: it is enough for it to maintain a certain humidity of the body and limbs.
The container must not be hermetically sealed: Arthropods require constant access to air. To do this, several holes are made in the lid.
Crustaceans should not be kept near foods and substances that have a strong odor.
To keep live crabs longer, they are placed in a spacious aquarium. The water in it must be sea water, and a stable ecosystem must meet the needs of this crustacean.
The storage temperature for live crabs is +10°C. In colder water they will quickly die.
In order for arthropods to remain alive for as long as possible, simply creating a suitable habitat will not be enough. Individuals should be regularly fed with small fish. In this case, crustaceans can be kept for several weeks or even months.
A few facts about the product and working with it
When boiling whole crabs or their claws, you should follow the basic rules developed by experienced cooks. Only then can you count on getting a delicious meal at home.
- When deciding how long to cook a product, you need to pay attention not only to the processing time, but also to the condition of the product. The finished crab turns bright red. Eating undercooked meat can lead to serious food poisoning.
- You should also not overcook claws or carcasses. Even the most tender Kamchatka crab meat will turn into rubber if you keep it in boiling water for several minutes.
Tip: If you want to get an exquisite delicacy, and not just a boiled product, you should use sea water rather than ordinary water. As a last resort, you can dilute sea salt in drinking water and prepare the component in this solution.
- If an individual is boiled completely, then after processing it needs to tear off its tail and shake the product in boiling water to get rid of marine debris.
- Today you can mostly find frozen crab claws on sale. Even at home, you can get a delicious dish from them if you act correctly. But still, it is better to buy live individuals. At the same time, they should be active and young (but not small). Young crabs have a very dense shell, which is easy to notice when comparing several specimens.
- After cooling the boiled crabs, they are laid out on their backs. This allows you to retain juice and give the meat maximum tenderness.
Particular attention should be paid to storing the product. Frozen crab cannot be stored for more than a year. Live specimens are kept in the refrigerator in the vegetable compartment. It is better if it takes a minimum of time - just a few hours after purchase. Boiled crab meat in its pure form or in its shell can be kept covered in the refrigerator for no more than 3 days.
Storage methods
In a refrigerator
Opened champignons without special packaging can be kept in the refrigerator on the middle shelf for up to 3 days. In this case, the temperature must be maintained within the range from 0 to +2 °C. Longer storage in the open air leads to the fact that champignons lose most of their moisture, their surface darkens, and they become tasteless.
If you put pre-prepared, peeled mushrooms in plastic containers or a plastic bag, they will retain their properties for a week. At the same time, it is important to periodically provide oxygen access to the packaging, otherwise the accumulated condensate will cause spoilage and rotting of the product.
You can also do this: place the mushrooms in a compartment for storing vegetables in one layer. They will need to be covered with a cotton cloth or paper towel on top. This way they can stay fresh for up to 5 days.
In the freezer
If you freeze champignons, their shelf life will increase significantly. Before storing mushrooms for freezing, they are first cleaned (as described above). Then they are laid out in hermetically sealed containers or bags that are tied tightly. Store mushrooms in the general compartment at a temperature of -18°C for 1 month. Champignons cannot be re-frozen, so they are divided into portions, each of which will need to be consumed at a time.
Note: it will be easier and faster to select mushrooms for cooking if you sort them by size. Small champignons can be frozen whole, large ones can be cut into pieces.
In room
If you don’t have time to process all the raw materials at once, use this option. But remember that this is a short-term storage method - no more than 12 hours. They do this: carefully place the mushrooms in an enamel basin or plastic bucket. Place the filled container in a cold place, such as a cellar, basement or bathroom.
Interesting: If there is a concrete floor in the basement, can you put potatoes on it?
Features of boiling the component
No matter how long, where or how the live crab was stored, it should be washed with cold water before cooking. To make this process easier for yourself, the individual should be placed in a container of fresh water for a few minutes. This causes the crabs to go into suspended animation and does not create problems during processing.
Next we act on the situation:
- Ideally, the delicacy is boiled and served directly in its shell, but, in the absence of experience, in order to cook the product evenly, it should be cut up. To do this, place the carcass on a hard surface, belly up, first tear off the claws. Then we use a knife to pry open the shell, remove the mucus and gills. Everything else is edible. We take the meat out of the shell and claws, now it can be processed.
- If you want to boil the whole product, no preliminary manipulations are needed. The same applies to frozen ingredients.
- To prepare crabs with or without shell, take bay leaf, black peppercorns, a little cloves, lemon, garlic and salt (preferably sea salt). We decide how much to use ourselves, depending on the volume of the main ingredient, but you should not overuse flavor enhancers.
- Pour water into a large container, put it on the fire, bring to a boil. Place all ingredients in boiling water. Including juice squeezed from lemon and chopped garlic.
- After the water boils again, put the crab preparations into it. We cook as much as recommended depending on their size, i.e. from 10 to 40 minutes.
- We serve the finished component directly in the shell or in the form of pure meat with lemon juice and vegetable oil or a special sauce.
It is recommended to eat crabs as an independent dish. Any additions in the form of a side dish will only spoil the impression of the delicious product.
Tip: If you want to get an exquisite delicacy, and not just a boiled product, you should use sea water rather than ordinary water. As a last resort, you can dilute sea salt in drinking water and prepare the component in this solution.
How to fry pistachios
Pistachios are delicious nuts that differ from other nuts in lower calorie content and have a fairly rich vitamin composition. These nuts have a tonic effect and help with chronic fatigue and depression. They are also called “funny nuts” because of the effect they have and the cracked, smile-shaped shell.
Iranian pistachios are considered the most delicious. They are sprinkled on ice cream, added to baked goods, cocktails, meat and fish dishes, and salads. In the East, pistachios are used to make baklava, Turkish delight and other national sweets.
Nowadays pistachios can be bought at any store, but since all nuts contain a large amount of oil and quickly become rancid, it is best to stock up on fresh pistachios, which can be dried or fried if desired. Fresh pistachios are soft and have a milky taste. We are more accustomed to eating them cooked. In addition, fresh nuts do not last long, and after drying in the sun they can be stored for almost a year. Few people know how to properly fry pistachios.
To properly fry pistachios, according to some recipes, you must first soak them in salt water. This is for those who like their nuts soaked through with salt. A simpler process sequence looks like this:
Raw pistachios must first be peeled and peeled, then boiled for five minutes. Then drain the pistachios in a colander and let them dry thoroughly.
Place the peeled, boiled and dried nuts on a baking sheet in an even layer. Preheat the oven to one hundred and eighty degrees and place a baking sheet with pistachios there. Fry for about five minutes, then sprinkle with spices and salt. You can do without spices altogether. You can eat pistachios after they have cooled completely, during which time they will have time to absorb salt.
Frying pistachios at home is easy; if you wish, you can do it not in the oven, but using a cast-iron frying pan. Pistachios, as already mentioned, can be pre-soaked and dried, or boiled. The prepared nuts are poured into a frying pan, greased with oil and fried until golden brown, with constant stirring, then seasoned with salt.
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Frying pistachios in a frying pan is especially popular, as this method gives them a more pronounced taste. In addition, you can control the degree of “toasting”. If there is too much oil, place the nuts on a paper towel after frying. which will absorb excess fat.
Raw pistachios must first be peeled and peeled, then boiled for five minutes. Then drain the pistachios in a colander and let them dry thoroughly.
Cooking methods
Acquaintance with crab meat is usually obtained in a restaurant, or at seaside resorts - their home. But when it comes to your first culinary experience with a delicacy, it’s better to start with cooking. You can cook either frozen or fresh crab.
Frozen
To ensure that it cooks evenly, the frozen crab is pulled out in advance. Depending on the size, thawing will take from 5 to 10 hours in the refrigerator. At room temperature, the meat will begin to spoil.
Many housewives resort to an express option - they heat frozen meat in the microwave. Unfortunately, this leads to uneven heating, when the outside becomes hard, but the inside remains cold and damp.
- Add seasonings to boiling water (pepper and bay leaves are suitable). If possible, sprinkle with lemon juice.
- Slowly dip into water.
- After three minutes, reduce the heat from high to low.
- How long to cook crabs? It depends on the size - from 15 to 40 minutes.
“Shelf life of frozen crab is 12 months”
