Skip to main content
NORCOOK
Kokt Krabbe
Sørlandet · Southern Coast

Kokt Krabbe

Whole boiled coastal crab, dressed simply and served with mayonnaise, lemon and crusty bread.

35 minModerate
Back to the index

Cultural Context & History

As the water cools in early autumn, the crab pots come up heavy along the skerries. Boiled in seawater and cracked at a garden table, crab is the south coast's unhurried feast.

Ingredients

  • 2 fresh live brown crabs
  • 50 g salt per litre of water
  • A handful of dill sprigs
  • White bread, to serve260 kcal · 8 g protein · 3 g fat · 48 g carbs per 100 g
  • Butter, to serve714 kcal · 0 g protein · 78.6 g fat · 0 g carbs per 100 g
  • Mayonnaise, to serve786 kcal · 0 g protein · 78.6 g fat · 0 g carbs per 100 g
  • Lemon wedges, to serve

Per-100 g values shown for ingredients verified against Nutrition data: USDA FoodData Central (snapshot 2026-09-11). Ingredients not yet verified show no nutrition line.

Recommended Tools

  • Large stockpotHolds enough salted water to cover both crabs.
  • Crab crackersSplit the claws without shattering the meat.
  • Crab pickTeases the sweet meat from the legs and joints.

Product suggestions are editorial references only; no purchase or affiliate links are currently configured.

Step-by-Step Instructions

  1. 1

    Bring a very large pot of water to a rolling boil, salting it well at 50 g per litre and adding a good handful of dill.

  2. 2

    Lower the live crabs in head-first, bring the water back to the boil, and cook for 20 to 25 minutes depending on their size.

  3. 3

    Lift the crabs out and set them on their backs to cool completely.

  4. 4

    Crack the claws, open up the body and clean out the shell, keeping both the brown and white meat.

  5. 5

    Serve the crab cold with bread, butter, mayonnaise and lemon wedges.

Chef's Tip

Chill the live crabs in the freezer for a couple of hours before cooking — it sedates them, the humane way to start, and stops them shedding their claws the moment they hit the boiling water.

Chef's Tip

Cooling them on their backs keeps the juices from draining away, so the body meat stays sweet and moist.

How this page was made

Written by
The Norcook editorial archive. No individual author is named yet — see the editorial and food-safety policy for what that means and what has to happen before a byline appears.
Content last checked
— “checked” records an editorial check, not a qualified review. Where one exists, the recipe-specific review record appears in the food-safety callout.
Regional context
Sørlandet — the hub carries the wider background, the ingredient glossary and its own sources.
Sources
No page-level sources are recorded for this recipe yet. The cultural background above is written as general context, not as a sourced historical claim.

Keep exploring

There are 76 more stories waiting in the index — from Arctic cures to viral bakes.

Browse all recipes