How To Reheat Crab Legs: Summer Special

Reheating food shouldn’t be difficult and foreign to anyone. You should use all of the food you got instead of throwing it away. Today I will show you how to reheat crab legs.

How To Reheat Crab Legs?

In the summer, I enjoy cooking seafood since it is easy to make and goes well with cooling herbs.

Summer meals should be flavorful, light, and refreshing. A delicious summer dish to serve is seafood. Your body needs more liquids and less food when it’s hot outside.

We frequently have leftovers because of this, and as I oppose wasting food, I just reheat the meal and it remains just as delicious as before.

The delicious meal of crab legs may be cooked up in a variety of ways.

1. By Steaming

To steam crab legs, I usually use a steamer pot, but you can use a bamboo steamer as well. Both will do a good job in reheating crab legs; it depends on what you have available.

To reheat them, you need to fill the steamer with lukewarm water, or you can mix the water with beer or white wine to add some extra flavor.
Turn on the stove, set it to high heat, and put the steamer on top. To properly reheat crab legs, wash them under the faucet. Once the water reaches its boiling point, remove the lid and place the crab legs in the basket on top.
Reduce the heat; medium heat will do just fine. Let them heat for around five minutes. When they are heated, remove them and serve them with the previous recipe or add some other side dishes, you can change the recipe as you like.

Steaming is a pretty fast and effective way to reheat crab ribs; it also softens them up, making them tender and tasteful. They will probably be a bit juicier than before, so match them with a recipe that goes well with juicy crab ribs.

2. By Boiling

If you don’t own a steamer, you can just boil the crab legs in a large pot.

Fill the pot with water or mix it with beer to give it a flavor. If you make the mixture, do it with a 2:4 ratio, water should take up the majority of space.
Set the stove on medium heat, put the pot on it, and then put the crab legs in the pot. When the water starts boiling, let them boil for four minutes. You can season the water if you like, with vinegar or lemon juice, for example.
When the boiling is finished, remove the crab legs with tongs, and since they were soaked in the water, leave them on a rack to drain.
After they are drained, you can serve them with lemon wedges, parsley, or butter. Be careful not to leave them to boil too much since you already previously cooked them; the meat could fall apart and become tasteless. Sometimes even two minutes will be plenty.

Personally, I tend to use any other technique to reheat crab legs. There’s no actual need to boil them to reheat them. Use it as the last option if you can’t reheat them any other way.

3. By Baking

The heat of the oven can reheat pretty much anything, and it’s a good way to leave the crab legs dry, soft, and hot.

It’s a bit slower process compared to the others, but when you have the oven available and you don’t want to reheat them using water, the oven is a good way to do it.

Preheat the oven, 350F will do it. While you wait for the oven to reach its temperature, place the crab legs in a baking dish. It doesn’t matter that much what kind of dish will you use. Put the aluminum foil on the bottom of the dish. If you want to add some extra flavor to crab legs, you can add peeled garlic cloves or various herbs of your choice.
Bake the crab legs in the oven for around 15 minutes. After that time has passed, carefully pull out the dish, remove the crab legs and leave them to cool for a bit. There’s also a variation of this technique, including water.
Instead of putting the aluminum foil at the bottom, you can pour a little water, then place the crab legs in the dish and cover them with aluminum foil. Poke a few holes in the foil so the water can create steam and soften the meat.

4. By Microwaving

Microwaving is always the simplest way to reheat any food.

To properly reheat the crab legs in a microwave, I use dill sprigs, paper towels, and cling film. To do it as I do, wrap about 3 crab legs with dill sprigs, just a couple of them.
Make as many bundles as much as you have crab legs. Cover each bundle with paper towels, and then cover them with cling film. If you are thinking right now, is it safe to wrap the food with cling film when you want to heat it with a microwave, it is. It’s safe as long as the food doesn’t come in contact with the cling film.
Microwave each plate of bundles for 2 minutes. When the microwave is done, remove the cling film and the paper towels. To serve them, you can use your favorite recipe or just serve them as I like to serve them with clarified butter and lemon wedges.

Microwaving is the fastest way to reheat crab legs, but it definitely doesn’t make them the most tasteful.

5. By Grilling

Grilling crab legs is a good way to reheat them and slightly change their flavor as well. When I grill them, I tend to use two methods:

In the first method, I use aluminum foil. Usually, I wrap around 3 crab legs in two sheets of aluminum foil and place them on the grill. 10 minutes is enough time to heat them up. After 10 minutes, I remove the foil and grill them for another 3 minutes on each side. After that, they are ready to be served.
The second method is without aluminum foil; instead, I just place them directly on the grill. Make sure you keep the thinner tips of the legs far from the direct heat. 6 minutes of grilling is plenty, after that time, they are ready to be served.

Grilled crab legs go well with my standard serving with lemon, but you can spice them up with hot sauce, grill sauce, or homemade marinade.

Conclusion

All of these methods for reheating crab legs are effective; it’s just a matter of choice. For any of these methods to be successful, crab legs have to be stored correctly.

When you cook them for the first time, keep the leftovers refrigerated until you want to reheat them and reuse them.

I guarantee you that your family will like them just as the fresh ones, I know mine does. 🙂