On Food and Cooking

crustaceans are generally sold to consumers
either frozen, cooked, or alive. Most “fresh”
raw shrimp have been obtained frozen and
thawed by the store. Ask for a sniff of one,
and don’t buy if you smell ammonia or other
off-odors. Cook them the same day.
The larger crustaceans, lobsters and crabs,
are generally sold either precooked or alive.
Live crustaceans should come from a clean-
looking tank, and should be active. They can
be kept alive in a moist wrapping in the
refrigerator for a day or two. Relatively small
lobsters and crabs will have finer muscle
fibers and so a finer texture.
Traditional recipes often treat lobsters,
crayfish, and crabs as if they were insensible
to pain, calling for the cook either to cut them
up or drop them in boiling water while they’re
still alive. These creatures don’t really have a
central nervous system. The “brain” in the
head region receives input only from the
antennae and eyes, and each body segment has