Why You Should Save Your Crab Shells

If you just made yourself a pile of steamed crabs for dinner, don't toss those shells in the trash just yet — you can still get some use out of them even if you can't eat them. That's because crab shells contain a lot of flavor, even once you've finished the delicious meat inside. You can save those shells to use in stock or sauce, and the process couldn't be easier — you simply simmer the whole shells with your aromatics, strain the solids out, and you've got a flavorful base to do with as you please. (While you may be able to eat imitation crab straight from the packet, the real deal has some serious upsides.)

The easiest thing to do with leftover crab shells is to make a stock. You can concentrate this stock into a sauce later by incorporating other ingredients. If you don't have enough crab shells on hand, you can supplement your stock with more readily available alternatives like shrimp shells, which also have plenty of flavor, especially in the heads. Chances are you spent a decent amount of money on higher-end crab, so you might as well squeeze every little bit of flavor out of it, right? And if you only have a few crab shells on hand, don't worry — you can freeze what you have and use them later when you've saved up enough.

If you're looking to make crab stock, you'll want to save up about 2 pounds of shells for around 1 quart of broth. That might sound like a lot, but crab shells are fairly dense, and as I mentioned earlier, it's easy to supplement with shrimp shells. You can also mix and match with ingredients like lobster shells if they happen to be in season. Once you have the stock completed, you can think about using it for things like seafood chowder, bisque, or any kind of pasta sauce that could benefit from that rich, briny flavor. Don't forget that the only exception is soft-shelled crabs — with these, you can actually eat the shells along with the meat.

And if you want to coax out even more flavor from your leftover crab shells, you can crack them in your blender or food processor (just until they're fractured evenly) before you throw them in the pot with your aromatics. Breaking the shells up allows more surface area to steep in the stock, extracting extra flavor, which will all show up in your end dish.