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***STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION***

Soft-shelled mud crabs

* No more chewy or leathery soft-shelled crabs *

What is a Soft-shelled mud crab?

Soft-shelled mud crab is a highly sought-after delicacy that is eaten whole. There is no need to peel off any hard-shell parts, The entire crab is as soft and tender as its meat.

Do your expensive crabs end up like this?

Then try soft-shelled crabs next time as they can be consumed whole. It is common to discard between 75-86% of a crab for which one has just paid a hefty premium for. A seasoned crab-lover can consume up to 25% of a crab but it is more common that only 14-20% of a crab is eatable. A soft-shelled crab on the other hand, can be consumed whole. Only face, tail flap, gills and intestines are removed before it is cooked. Therefore, choosing to eat soft-shelled crab gives you more food and value for your money.

Soft-shell crabs are not of a particular species. They are regular hard-shelled crabs born of any part of the crab family. We work with the scientific name Scylla Paramamosain, commonly known as the green mud crab. (Scylla is the genus of mud crabs with four different subspecies, all four are almost indistinguishable in looks and taste).

Like many other exoskeleton animals (having the skeleton outside of the body), a crab needs to shed their old shell to grow a new, larger one, to be able to increase in size. This process is known as molting. During the short molting process, the crabs must be harvested quickly to ensure their shells do not harden. The sooner you harvest the crab after molting (preferably within the first hour), the softer and more tender it will be, as the new shell membrane gets harder over time.




What makes our soft-shelled crabs so special?

You will never get a chewy and leathery soft-shelled crab from us. Our crabs are harvested within the first hours after being molted, by an automated robot and cryogenically frozen. In a traditional soft-shell mud crab production, the molting process is monitored manually by people, every 1-4 hours, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Such dull, mundane, and repetitive working conditions increase the likelihood of mistakes and errors being made in the regulation of harvesting the molting crabs at precisely the right time. By the time these crabs are collected they can be up to 8 hours old, by which point the crabs have already developed a hard, chewy, leathery shell texture.

And many soft-shell mud crab farmers are small producers and may not care or even understand the need for proper freezing facilities, resulting in a large loss of natural liquid, taste, and weight when the crabs are thawed and cooked.

These sub-quality crabs, when bought and packed by distributors, are mixed with crabs of different qualities, from different farms with unknown origins, making it highly likely that the customer whose plate they are served on, will not have a pleasant experience, causing damage to the reputation of the restaurateurs who unknowingly purchased such poorly produced crab.

We sell our crabs under our own brand via high-quality conscious distributors, and we do not negotiate on quality. Our distribution network and branding ensure that no crabs of unknown origin are sold under our brand. We pride ourselves on our guarantee to bring you the very best in taste and quality, due to our crabs being harvested and processed automatically (no human intervention) within 60 minutes of molting and cryogenically frozen alive. So, we guarantee that you will never get a hard, chewy or leathery crab from us.

Naturally molted, we don't harm our crabs.

Many unethical and ignorant crab producers cruelly remove the crab's legs and claws and even eyes in hope for them to grow faster. That is a cruel practice and does not work. There are published studies, together with our own laboratory studies, that show that ablation of limbs and eyes does not increase a crab’s mass over time. And the reason for that is that crabs will stop grow and focus all energy on regrowing its missing limbs instead of growing bigger. And some will also die of infection from their wounds. So, in regards of soft-shelled crab production, it is a bad business practice, as a crab at a size of 70-80 gram will need in average 35 days (between 1-70 days from arriving) to molt naturally. If cutting their legs and claws, the crab will molt within 10 days, but it will not have fully developed legs and claws. It will take another full molting period of 60-70 days for it to fully regain the missing limbs. It is with pride we can say that our crabs molt naturally and are produced by modern ethical standards.

Competitor's chemically dissolved crab shells

Some companies soak hard crabs in a chemical bath and let the chemicals dissolve the crab's shell's calcium structure. The chemical dissolving method will not render the shell structure as soft and natural as a newly molted soft-shelled crab. A newly naturally molted crab's shell is just like a thin membrane that is still as soft and tender as the rest of the crab's meat. The chemicals used in this process may also negatively affect the taste and the consumer’s health.

Nutrition

Soft-shelled crabs contain essential vitamins and minerals, such as vitamins B6 and B12m, vitamin E and K, riboflavin, folate, niacin, thiamin, iron, calcium, magnesium, copper, selenium, potassium, zinc, and phosphorus. A 65g serving of soft-shelled crab also provides 13g protein, 13g of fat, and 11g of carbohydrates. Soft-shelled crab is very low in saturated fat, low in calories, and contains essential omega 3 fats. Soft-shell crab is also rich in cholesterol and serves 79 mg of cholesterol, about 26% of the recommended daily intake web page level.

Production

Our soft-shell crab production occurs indoors under strict environmental regulations. Crabs are kept in individual compartments for an average of 35 days before they molt naturally. The daily management such as monitoring of health status and development stage, as well as feeding, cleaning, and harvesting is done by robots driven by artificial intelligence (AI). We feed the crabs twice a day with in-house produced ecological feed. Our water quality and hygiene conditions are automatically controlled at high web page levels using modern technology. The crabs are nurtured in highly filtered, disinfected, recirculated water keeping them free from harmful particles, viruses, bacteria, and parasites.

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