I tried searching on this forum before if someone knew how much meat was in crab. I wasn't very successful or just found vague answers.
Well I had some crab the other week and measured it out so I at least have somewhat of an answer now. Thought I'd share my findings
Now it would be impossible to measure out the amount of raw meat from crab since you cook it in it's shell. Also, the various shell-to-meat ratios (depending on what species of crab it is and the size of the crab) would vary the amount.... but this at least gives you an idea.
Now I had DUNGENESS crab. So if you had King or Snow or any other species, you would have to measure it out since, like I said, the shell-to-meat ratio would be different.
So we bought 2 fresh, live crab. Each were just over 2 lbs. Once cooked and gutted, we had 4 halves (for 4 people). I measured out my half and it came to 9.2oz cooked (shell and meat). Once I removed all the meat, I ended up measuring the shell/leftover and subtracting that from my first measurement. So, with math
, I calculated that the amount of meat from that half of a Dungeness crab came to 4.8oz.
That's a 50% yield (mind you, I was quite patient and was able to completely and precisely remove all meat from the shells). So in conclusion, you would have to eat 1 full crab to get near the 8oz of required meat. I just ended up eating a 4oz steak, alongside my crab, to make up for the missing amount of meat.
Amount of meat in dungeness crab
