How to Purchase Crab Meat Good Quality

How to purchase crab meat good quality is depend on their grades and how they are processed and stored. First thing first, you need to understand that the crab meat is sold in either canned crab meat or refrigerated crab meat inside plastic package. These crab meats have different texture and taste. More importantly, you also need to select the crab meat based on their grades. Different grade of crab meat has different quality as well.

Crab meat is good cheaper alternative when you do not have enough budgets to buy crab in a whole or you just want to cook crab in quick preparation. The advantage of buying crab meat product is that they are easy to be found and mostly available in supermarket or grocery stores. Crab meats in cans are the cheapest crab products and they are made with variety of product types based on their grades. Canned crab meat usually is pasteurized or pressured heated to kill the bacteria inside the meats or to make the shelf life go longer. Unopened canned crab and plastic packaged crab meats can last for months and even years than the fresh and frozen whole crabs.

How to purchase crab meat good quality based on their grades
How to purchase crab meat good quality can be done based on their grades. Below is some grade for the crab meat that mostly you are going to find offered in the supermarkets such as:
1.      Crab meat grades
There are several crab meat grades available from the jumbo lump to the claw:
-          Jumbo lump: This is the most expensive crab meat grade which consists of two large muscles connected to crab swimming fins. They are highly valued due to the big size, delicate flavor, and the bright white meat color. It is best to be used when you are cook recipe using the size of the lump as the main center.

-          Lump: This canned crabs made by mixed meats from the special grade and jumbo lump grade. They are good to be used in recipes such as salads, crab cakes, casseroles, and dips. The meats will give a very nice presentation when served as stuffing meats in the chicken, seafood, vegetables, and fish.
-          Special: How to purchase crab meat good quality but cheaper price? Well, this is might be the answer because special grade consist of smaller white meat pieces taken out of the crab body. Special crab meat is versatile product for many recipes like wraps, salads, crab balls, soups, crab cakes, and quesadillas.
-          Claw: The claw meats have brown color of meats picked from the swimming fins of the crab. They have very strong flavor and thus such meat is good for recipes with heavy sauces or soups and dips because when you cook them, they flavor of the meats remain.

2.      Foodservice crab meat grades
There are several food service crab meat grades available from colossal to claw fingers:
-          Colossal crab meat: This meat consists of two large muscles connected to crab swimming fins. Actually, they are same with the jumbo lump since they are highly priced due to the large size, delicate flavor, and the bright white meat color. It is best to be used when you are cook recipe using the size of the lump as the main center.
-          Culinary crab: This product does not have an artificial binder which is good and actually it is an innovative crab meat product which made with patented process of shaping 100 percent wild-harvested crab meat taken out of a whole crab into jumbo lump.
-          Super lump: The meats are taken from broken pieces of jumbo lump and sold as large flakes with white body meat and it is perfect for dishes such as salads, crab cakes, casseroles, dips, and so on.
-          Claw fingers: This is the cheapest grade of the crab meat that consists of brown meat taken out from the first section of the crab claw meat and the shells are removed. Just like the claw grade above, this meats have very strong flavor and thus such meat is good for recipes with heavy sauces or soups and dips because when you cook them, they flavor of the meats remain.
Those are several grades of crab meat which you can use as reference or guides when you want to buy crab meats.

How to purchase crab meat good quality: canned crab or refrigerated crab?
Since there are two different products available for the crab meats in the supermarket or grocery stores which are the crab meat in cans/ canned crab meat and refrigerated crab meat then you also need to know which one is the most suitable according to your preference. First, most of the crab meats stored into cans are pressure heated or pasteurized for the sake of longer shelf life which results in drier and chewier meat. Moreover, many facilities like to give additional additives such as citric acid in order to prevent offset moisture loses during the pasteurized process or discoloration. Although there are some of manufacturers do not do anything or added additional additives to the canned crab meat.

Another product likes the refrigerated crab meat, they are typically processed with lower temperatures around 182 to 190 degrees and so they are considered to be tender and juicier than canned crab meats. But the downside of this product is that they are averagely sold in higher prices than the canned meats. However you will get crab meats with sweet, meaty, and plump crab meats pieces that closely resemble true fresh crab meats. How to purchase crab meat good quality in more reasonable price can be happen when you are lucky enough to get refrigerated crab meat in high quality but with cheap cost. You can look for different brands to see which one offer inexpensive prices.
Those are some tips and information regarding how to purchase crab meat good quality from the crab meat dealers or supermarket. If you want to use either canned or plastic packaged crab meat, just make sure after you open them, you should use them quickly before spoilage.