New food mantra for Maine: ‘Pass the green crab empanadas, please’?

Photo / Bridie McGreavy A clammer in March 2015 at sunrise in Frenchman Bay, where it was so cold he had to dig through ice covering the mudflat to get at the clams. University of Maine researchers are looking into possible food uses for green crabs, a predator of soft-shell clams, that could lead to the commercial harvest of the invasive clam-eating species.

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University of Maine researchers are looking into possible food uses for green crabs that could lead to the commercial harvest of the invasive clam-eating species.

Maine Public reported that UMaine’s food scientists have lately been testing green crab empanadas — a stuffed bread or pastry baked or fried in many countries of Latin America and in Spain — and found that two-thirds of taste-testers approved the product.

Newmarket, N.H., chef Brendan Vesey has been using the crab to make stock for bisque, New Hampshire Public Radio reported. Vesey told NHPR you could spend hours shelling 20 pounds of the crabs and end up with only a half-pound of meat. After making stock, Vesey grinds up the shells and the crab meat and trades the mush as chicken feed with a local farm.

The Portland Press Herald in May reported the predators were partly responsible for 2016’s 21% drop in soft-shell clam landings, and clammers expected to face a shrinking harvest for 2017. One green crab can consume 40 half-inch clams per day.

In 2014, a North Carolina-based seafood processor was looking at cat food as a possible use for the crab, but found that packing and transportation costs didn’t make the venture worthwhile.