Green crabs are an invasive species that have exploded in numbers off the coast of New England. They’re often called the world’sworst invasive species. They originally came from Western Europe and Africa, and now they’re found off every continent except Antarctica. They can be pretty destructive to local ecosystems, as they overeat shellfish, eelgrass, and compete for food with other crabs and lobsters. So what can be done about these little green invaders? One solution could be to eat them. GBH’s Morning Edition Host Mark Herz learned more about these crabs from chef and owner of the restaurant Paguin Cambridge, Tracy Chang.
Mark Herz: You recently gave a demonstration talking about the impact of green crabs. Tell us more about why this is something people should be paying attention to.
Chef Tracy Chang: Well, first and foremost, we as chefs have the responsibility to make food delicious. If we want butts in seats and guests in the restaurants, things have got to taste good. The other thing is, we have a unique opportunity in terms of a platform to shape how people are eating and how people are thinking about food. So it’s important for us to talk to our suppliers all the time, talk to the farmers, et cetera, to see what part we can play as chefs and also what part guests can play as consumers to help our local ecosystems. For instance, people love to eat oysters, right? People want to eat oysters year-round, all the time. That’s great. Lots of raw bars, great seafood here, and I think that if you want to eat your oysters and if you want to eat them today, tomorrow, the next 10, 20, 50 years, then you need to understand what else is happening in the ecosystem and in the life cycle of these oysters.
So, in come these invasive green crabs that you just mentioned. They are destroying our oyster beds, our kelp beds, things that are so important to be helping us clean these waters and maintain these pristine coastal environments.
If we want to be eating oysters for decades to come, then we also have to eat the green crabs.
Herz: Tell us about cooking them and what kind of recipes you have.
Chef Chang: Well, the great news about eating green crabs is that they’re extremely rich in crabby flavor. They’re very delicious. I think that oftentimes people think, “Oh, crab. Okay, I’m gonna have this like flaky, tender meat here in a crab cake,” but green crabs are actually better for making a very rich stock. So you could make like clam chowder and do your riff on it, but with a green crab stock. For us, we sell a lot of ramen at our restaurant, so what I did was I made a green crab stock and I added coconut milk, lemongrass, makrut lime leaves, ginger, Thai chili. We made a curry paste and we made this laksa broth.
Herz: That sounds utterly delicious and it’s interesting, the intersection of the food itself and the stories about the food. Can you tell us about that?
Chef Chang: At our restaurant, it’s hard to have food without having story, and it’s hard to have a story without having food. I think that’s a little bit of what I get made fun of for at the restaurant. Both guests and my team members, they always say, “You have a story for everything,” and I tell them, “Well, I try to do things with intention.” When I’m putting something on the menu, it’s usually not something that I was inspired by yesterday because I went out to eat or I came back from a trip. It’s very often something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, I’ve made many times, and most often something that I’ve cooked with someone else. It transports me personally into a moment in time that I have this nostalgic feeling just really positive memory from having cooked with someone. And I want to recreate that moment for other guests. Maybe they might not feel like they were there and they met that person. You can’t always tell the entire 10 minute story in a one or two minute dish. But I think that when the food comes from the soul, you can taste how rich and how decadent it can be.
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