The easiest and most versatile way to prepare green crabs is to simmer them into a stock that can be used as a base for soups, bisques, noodle dishes, risotto, or frozen in ice cube trays to add depth of flavor to pasta sauces, sautés and more.

To make a basic stock, rinse the frozen crabs in water to remove any residual sand and add them whole to a stock pot with water and aromatics like onion, garlic, fennel and celery. Simmer for as little as 45 minutes or up to four hours.

For more recipe and culinary guidance, visit Greencrab.org

SAFE HANDLING — Keep frozen until ready to use. Remove from packaging and defrost in the refrigerator 8-10 hours before use. Do not defrost at room temperature. Once defrosted, do not refreeze and use within 3 days.

Eat as many as you can! Seriously, we would be lucky to overfish them, and we've got a very long way to go. Developing a culinary market for the crabs makes it possible for harvesters to trap and transport them to market. The more we remove from our fragile New England coastal ecosystem the better.  

How destructive are they? A single green crab can eat more than 40 juvenile softshell clams in a day, and a single female green crab can produce 185,000 eggs each year. In fragile marshes, which are essential for species from clams to osprey, the crabs tunnel and make the marsh vulnerable to erosion. Without very cold ocean temperatures and a hard freeze in estuaries to kill the juvenile green crabs, their populations are unchecked and exploding.