The hardest part of the Maryland crab feast for beginners is getting at the crab meat; the sweet lumps inside blue crabs are the most delicious crab pickin's in the world, but, small as those nuggets are, and tucked away as they are, they are devilishly difficult to get at.

For starters, pull off all of the crab's little legs; if the crabs are sizeable, it's good to run the legs through your teeth, extracting sweet bits of meat. Then pull off the two large claws. To eat them, you pound them lightly with your mallet — don't crush them, or the meat and shell will be crushed together. Just break the shell, then, working with a knife, a fork, a pick, or your fingers, extract the meat.

Now comes the main event. Pick up your legless, clawless crab and stand it on its bottom edge, so that the white underbelly is facing you. The design on the underbelly that looks like a baseball catcher's chest protector should have an arrow-shaped flap on it that's pointing downward. With your fingers, grab that arrow, force it out of its groove, grab it with your fingers, then, pulling upward, rip back and remove the whole "chest protector" — a triangular piece of soft shell. Now you're ready to go in.

Keep the crab standing on the same bottom edge. Planting one thumb at the top of the crab on the underbelly side, and another thumb on the top of the crab on the red top shell side, pry the crab open by moving your thumbs in opposite directions. Push hard, if you must. Suddenly, the crab will pop open, and you'll have two pieces: the nearly empty top shell (which is red on the outside), and the white underbelly shell, filled with cartilage and crab meat.

I like to start with the nearly empty red shell. I describe it as "nearly" empty because it may have in it some roe (reddish-orange, absolutely delicious), and some tomalley. The latter, to the crab connoisseur, is also absolutely delicious — though I've seen crab neophytes quake at this soft mass of yellow-green material. For my money, it has more flavor than any other part of the crab. I sometimes take a spoon and eat it by itself, or along with the roe, or as a kind of sauce to spread on the pieces of crab meat that I extract later. Use your spoon to probe every corner of the "empty" red shell, looking for tomalley.

When it comes to the meat-stuffed underbelly shell, there are literally scores of techniques that Marylanders employ to get at the meat. I like to start by breaking the body in half; you grip the left-hand side firmly in one hand, the right-hand side firmly in the other, and snap the body open. Each half is identical, and requires the same technique. Basically, each half is filled with what I think of as hard chambers, and the chambers contain the meat. The largest chamber, on each half, is right near the part of the body where the large leg once was; you can recognize the area by the large hole you made when removing the leg. A good way to get at this chamber, and all chambers, is to gently saw it open with your serrated knife (some like to pick it open with their fingers, others prefer to crack it open with their teeth.) Extract the meat and enjoy! Keep going until you've worked your way around all the chambers of both halves. Then, your lips a-tingle, reach for another crab and start over again!

Text by David Rosengarten
Editor-in-chief, The Rosengarten Report