* HOST: Quick.

If you could choose, what would you order for your last meal?

I'd feast on callinectes sapidus, Maryland blue crab.

This tasty beautiful swimmer is the star of today's show.

Where we'll cook it, you guessed it: over live fire.

Get ready for grilled soft shell crab sandwiches.

This is fantastic.

Smoke grilled crab cakes.

Check it out.

Beautiful golden brown.

And Maryland steamed crabs cooked over a wood fire.

Behold your steamed crabs.

From the Pearlstone Campus in Reisterstown, Maryland, I'm Steven Raichlen and this is Project Fire .

* ANNOUNCER: Steven Raichlen's Project Fire is made possible by...

This is The Big Green Egg, where fire and flavor come together.

You can roast, bake, and sear with the versatility of a grill, oven, and barbecue smoker combined.

Locate a dealer at biggreenegg.com.

Fire Magic, combining style with the versatility to sear, smoke, rotisserie cook, and charcoal grill, crafted in America for over 80 years... Green Mountain Grills, wood fired pellet grills... Blue Rhino...

Truly wireless temperature starts with Maverick.

And by the following... * STEVEN: I grew up in Baltimore and my culinary education began with the foods for which Maryland is justly famous.

Supernaturally sweet Eastern Shore corn, briny Chesapeake Bay oysters, and above all, Maryland blue crab.

All my major life turning points, from birthdays to graduations, were celebrated by crab feasts and to this day, no trip to Charm City is complete without crab cakes at Faidley's Lexington Market and a visit to one of the state's innumerable crab houses for a feast of Maryland steamed crab.

On today's show, a native son returns home to grill and eat crab.

[fire swooshes in] The soft shell is a blue crab that is recently molted, that is, shed its carapace, but its loss is our gain because the meat becomes supernaturally crisp and you can eat the crab, crisp shell and all.

Soft shells are traditionally pan fried, but I like them even better, you guessed it, hot off the grill.

* This is a soft shell crab.

It's been trimmed and cleaned.

And the first step is to brush the soft shell crab on both sides with melted butter.

* Then, season each crab first with Chesapeake Bay seafood seasoning, fragrant with celery seed and mace, then add a second layer of flavor with your favorite Cajun seasoning.

One sweet, one spicy, together they're delicious.

Now turn the crabs over and brush with melted butter, and season the crabs with more seafood seasoning, and your favorite Cajun seasoning.

There will be plenty of flavor on these crabs.

Now, the tartar sauce.

Tartar sauce is a classic French seafood condiment, but it has been commercialized and dumbed down by the addition of too much sugar.

To make it from scratch, start with mayonnaise.

First add Dijon mustard for tang, then stir in finely chopped cornichon pickles for tartness, diced jalape�os for heat, capers for salt, and chives for a delicate onion flavor.

Then, grate the zest of a fresh lemon into your tartar sauce.

Lemon zest always adds brightness.

Then, cut the lemon in half, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Whisk the ingredients together, take a taste.

Mmm, tangy and tart, and mercifully free of sugar.

But we are using sugar to caramelize the grilled lemons.

Dip in the sugar, shake off the excess.

The last step is to butter the buns for the sandwiches.

These are fresh brioche buns.

I'll brush with butter on both cut sides.

Now, to the grill.

I set the grill up for direct grilling.

I'll grill the crabs on the hot side.

Grill the buns on the medium hot side.

You want to clean your grill with a stiff wire brush or wooden grill scraper, then oil it with our oiling cloth.

Arrange the soft shells on the hot grill grate.

* After a minute or so, give each crab a quarter turn, so it grills evenly.

* Meanwhile, grill the lemons.

Once, the soft shells are browned on the bottom, turn them over.

The crabs look great.

You can see they're getting dark and crusty on the top.

And finally, your brioche rolls.

* Twenty seconds per side will do it.

* Great.

So, here are your buns.

Give the crabs another quarter turn.

* Alright, these guys can come off.

They caramelized beautifully.

* And finally, the soft shell crabs.

You can see they are crusty and golden brown.

* And now, let's put it together.

A Swiss chard leaf on the bottom, next a soft shell crab on each sandwich, a slice of tomato, then a dollop of your made from scratch tartar sauce, and finally a squeeze of caramelized lemon juice.

Place the buns back on top.

Now that's a soft shell crab sandwich.

Mmm.

This is fantastic.

The crab shell crackling crisp, the meat sweet and spicy, you've got your cool tomato, your Swiss chard, your tangy tartar sauce, more flavor, less fat.

It's the ultimate Maryland soft shell crab sandwich.

[fire swooshes in] Check out what we did this morning.

Maryland crab cakes smoke roasted on the grill.

[fire swooshes in] Having grown up in Maryland, I have strong opinions about crab cakes, especially about what you should put in a crab cake and what you shouldn't.

Onions do not belong in crab cakes, nor do celery, bell peppers, chilies, or garlic.

No, a proper crab cake contains just one ingredient, jumbo lump crab meat.

The Project Fire twist, a whiff of wood smoke.

* Start with jumbo lump backfin crab meat from blue crabs from the Chesapeake Bay.

Sorry folks, in my opinion that is the best crab in the world.

Pick through it, removing any little bits of shell that may remain.

Then, crack an egg into a mixing bowl.

Add a spoonful of Chesapeake Bay seafood seasoning, which is sweet with mace and fiery with cayenne pepper, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, a spoonful of mustard, and a generous dollop of mayonnaise.

The mayonnaise is the binder that holds the crab cake together.

Whisk these ingredients together to make a smooth creamy base for the crab.

[taps the whisk on the side of the bowl] Now, gently add your crab meat to the base mixture.

* Season lightly with salt and pepper, and sprinkle on finely crushed cracker crumbs.

* Working as gently as possible, fold the ingredients together.

* Chill your crab mixture well before forming the crab cakes.

[spatula hits the side of bowl] [fire swooshes in] Moisten your hands in water and form the crab mixture into crab cakes.

* Chill your crab cakes for one hour in the refrigerator before grilling.

[fire swooshes in] And now, the cocktail sauce with a Project Fire twist.

It starts with the conventional ketchup and prepared horseradish, then a splash of Worcestershire sauce, then we add fish sauce, that malodorous Asian condiment made from pickled anchovies adds a wonderful umami flavor, and finally Sriracha.

Whisk the ingredients together.

Take a taste.

Woo, that definitely has a kick.

To cook the crab cakes, I'll use a charcoal grill that I'll set up for modified direct grilling.

Dump your lit coals in a thicker mound on one side, then more thinly in the center, and finally in a thicker mound on the other side.

Install the grill grate and in the center place a plancha.

A plancha is a cast iron griddle.

You could also use a large cast iron skillet.

We'll fry the crab cakes on the plancha, but add wood chunks to the fire to generate wood smoke.

When the plancha is ready, a few drops of water sprinkled on will evaporate in a couple of seconds.

Brush the plancha with clarified butter.

You clarify it to keep it from burning.

Arrange the crab cakes on the buttered plancha.

* And here comes the Project Fire twist.

Place a couple of hickory chunks on the charcoal to generate wood smoke.

Place the lid on the grill.

This holds in the heat and smoke, which cooks, and smokes your crab cakes.

Cook the crab cakes at around 400 degrees, cooking time, 5-8 minutes per side.

[fire swooshes in] Nice, huh?

Once, the crab cakes are brown on the bottom, brush the tops with more of your clarified butter, then using a fish spatula, turn the crab cakes over.

* Now, cover the grill again to hold in the heat and wood smoke.

[fire swooshes in] And here are your crab cakes.

Check it out.

Beautiful golden brown, sizzling, crusty on the top.

So, I'll take the crab cakes off.

* And finally, one for me.

A dollop of the cocktail sauce.

Now, let's see if these crab cakes are as good as I remember.

Take a cut.

Mmm...they're even better.

Buttery and crusty on the outside, creamy and crabby on the inside, delicately spiced, hauntingly perfumed with wood smoke.

Let me try the cocktail sauce.

Mmm, with the sriracha, it's absolutely electrifying.

Now, that's a Maryland crab cake.

[fire swooshes in] We blast them with spices and steam them with vinegar, and beer, and eat them with our bare hands.

[fire swooshes in] ALEX: Hi Steven.

I live in the West coast and that means we eat a lot of Dungeness crab.

My question to you is, is there a way to cook Dungeness crab, cooked or alive, but whole and intact on a grill or inside a smoker?

[fire swooshes in] Great question, Alex.

Of course I love Dungeness crab, but being an old Baltimore boy, my favorite is still Maryland blue crab.

We blast it with salt and spices and steam it with vinegar, and beer, and of course, eat it with our bare hands.

Try it with Dungeness crab sometime, and you might become a believer.

* Warning folks, I've taken a few liberties with the traditional recipe by adding vegetables and sausage in the style of a Cajun crayfish boil.

The steamed crabs will be even better.

First, quarter two white onions.

I've left the root end intact, this will help the onions hold together during cooking.

[chops the onion] Next, cut two heads of garlic in half.

[chops the garlic] Now, cut four ears of corn in thirds.

[chops the corn] Then, trim off the end of the stem of the okra, leaving the pods intact.

Finally, cut kielbasa or andouille sausage into two-inch pieces.

[chops the sausage] Let me show you how to put it all together.

So first place corn, kielbasa, onions, garlic, and okra in the bottom of the pot.

Now, add a layer of blue crabs, taking care not to get yourself pinched.

* And next, add a layer of seasonings: coarse sea salt, lots of pepper.

These should be really spicy.

Powdered mustard spice and Chesapeake Bay seafood seasoning.

* We'll build a second layer, more onion, garlic, more corn, okra, and more sausage, and of course more blue crabs.

These are jumbos from the Chesapeake Bay.

Now, another layer of coarse sea salt, coarsely ground black pepper.

Steamed crabs should burn your lips.

Mustard powder and seafood spice.

The remaining onion, corn, kielbasa, and okra.

Finally, add distilled white vinegar and a couple bottles of beer.

* And there are your Maryland crabs ready for steaming.

Let's go over to the fire.

This is it folks.

Steamed crabs cooked the old-fashioned way, over a wood fire, and then very important, place a brick on the pot.

One day my grandfather forgot the brick and the crabs crawled out of the pot all over the kitchen.

Cooking time, about 20 minutes.

When the crabs turn bright orange, they're ready.

You know, steamed crabs are my favorite food on the planet.

When I was growing up, every holiday, every birthday, every graduation, we celebrated with steamed crabs.

To this day, whenever I come to Baltimore, a visit is not complete unless I have steamed crabs.

[fire swooshes in] This is the longest 20 minutes I've ever waited.

Take off the brick and behold, your steamed crabs.

You can see they've turned bright orange.

That means they're cooked.

[fire swooshes in] All right, so the proper way to eat steamed crabs: on a table spread with newspapers.

* The only utensils, a paring knife and a wooden mallet.

To start, you break off one of the claws, break off the first section, pound it with a mallet, expose the sweet flesh.

Mmm, this is heaven.

What makes this so amazing, you have delicate sweet crab and then the spices get on your fingers.

So, you season the crab as you eat it.

Then, you crack this little knuckle.

That's extremely sweet meat, mm.

* Then, you crack this claw piece, and I peel this off, come around like that, look at this beautiful claw meat.

Mmm.

Sweet and spicy.

Then, you take off these little swimmerets, and... ...just kind of nibble the meat out of the swimmerets.

* Look at that sweet nugget of meat.

One of the beauties of eating crabs is you never really get full because it takes so much work to eat each one, you get hungry again by the time you start the next one.

[bangs the mallet on the crab] All right, lift this little trap door with your paring knife and you pry it back, and pull it off, and that will release the top shell from the body.

Now, in the corners of the top shells, there's a yellow custardy substance.

That's called "the mustard."

It's the crab fat and in my family at least, we consider this a delicacy.

* Next thing you do, these are the gills, you want to scrape off the gills, those are not edible.

And then, we're going to scrape out all the intestines, the entrails, which are not good to eat.

We're going to make one cut here.

We're going to make one cut here.

And that takes off kind of the mouth and other stuff that's not so good to eat.

Then, break each section in half like this.

Then, make a cut on the face here.

And I like to actually cut this in half with the knife, break it open, and here is your backfin lump crab meat.

This is the most prized morsel in the crab.

This is what we made the crab cakes with.

Mmm....mmm...mmm.

And then, you keep working along, you fish out more of this sweet meat.

Every once in a while, if you want a little more spice, you just grab a little pinch of that spice that's on the outside of the crab and eat that with the crab.

It definitely, takes patience to eat a crab, but that's what makes it so fun.

* Mmm!

Hot crabs and a cold beer, it doesn't get any better than that.

Now, the corn, okra, and sausage aren't traditional, but you know you have to eat your vegetables, so a bite of okra, delicious, and by leaving the pod whole, you have eliminated the sliminess.

Corn...mmm...crunchy and sweet as candy.

I'll cut a little piece of kielbasa.

Mmm, what a combination, crab and kielbasa.

So that folks is how we steam and eat Maryland crab on Project Fire .

Maryland has a rich culinary heritage.

Thanks for sharing it with me.

See you next time.

ANNOUNCER: For recipes and more live-fire cooking, visit stevenraichlen.com.

You can also follow Steven Raichlen on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Steven's book, "How to Grill Vegetables," and the classic, "Project Smoke," can be ordered online at stevenraichlen.com, or call this phone number for ordering and customer service.

Steven Raichlen's Project Fire was made possible by...

This is The Big Green Egg, where fire and flavor come together.

You can roast, bake, and sear with the versatility of a grill, oven, and barbecue smoker combined.

Locate a dealer at biggreenegg.com.

Fire Magic, combining style with the versatility to sear, smoke, rotisserie cook, and charcoal grill, crafted in America for over 80 years... Green Mountain Grills, wood fired pellet grills... Blue Rhino...

Truly wireless temperature starts with Maverick.

And by the following... And very important, a brick on top of the pot.

Whoa, that was good.

Nobody else had anything to do for the rest of the day did they?

[laughter] By the way, there's going to be a quiz tonight, a practical quiz, and I want to make sure everybody eats crab properly tonight.

Man, whoever thought that little Stevie Raichlen from Ronis Road in Baltimore would be eating crabs on national television?

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