Ingredient Spotlight: Chesapeake Blue Crabs - MICHELIN Guide

Summer in the mid-Atlantic means one thing for seafood fans: hammer time. And by hammers we mean wooden mallets—for cracking crabs, of course!

Crab season is moving full steam ahead, so we asked a few local experts to answer all of our burning questions about the beloved blue crab.

When is crab season in the Chesapeake Bay region?

Legally speaking, crab season this year runs from March 17 to November 30 in Virginia and April 1 to December 15 in Maryland. However, the quantity and quality of product fluctuates significantly during this 10-month window.

This variance is a result of the crab's life cycle, which revolves around molting, or shedding its shell as it grows (hence soft shell crabs). Once a crab sheds its shell, it begins the process of hardening again. John Rorapaugh, the Sustainable Director at ProFish, explains that crabs that have just molted aren't filling out their shell as much as those that have been growing for weeks. "Crabs can grow up to 30% in size per shed," he says. "As you get further away from that cycle of life, you get crabs that are fuller."

As a result, the early months of crab season are more of a gamble when it comes to how heavy or full a crab is as they may be caught just after a molt. "As you get into the later months, September, even as far as October, you have really hard crabs and you have very full crabs. That's what everybody looks for," Rorapaugh says.

While most consumers start getting excited about crabs as soon as Memorial Day rolls around, it's actually better to wait until late summer or early fall to indulge. "I personally believe that mid-August through September is the best time for crabs. They're big and plump and fatty," says Jay Caputo, the executive chef at Ivy City Smokehouse. He oversees all the crab purchasing for the tavern and the market, and they go through about 25 bushels per week.

Unlike some crab houses, Ivy City buys and serves exclusively Maryland crabs. Blue crabs can be harvested and sold all year round, but they come from different waters.

What's the big deal about Chesapeake Bay crabs?

Blue crabs are not exclusive to the Bay—they can be found in brackish estuaries along the East Coast through the Gulf of Mexico and as far south as Uruguay. Still, many crustacean connoisseurs remain fiercely loyal to the Chesapeake blue crab.

Rorapaugh agrees that blue crabs in this region have a distinct flavor caused by seasonal temperature changes. "Our crab goes through a transition where it has to protect itself during the cold months, so it, in a sense, fattens up to protect itself," he says. "The southern crabs don't really have to go through that."

By comparison, he says crabs from southerly waters can be bland. "When you think of Maryland crab, you have a lot of that mustard and the different colors that are in there and it just has character to it and has more of a flavor to it."