♪
We're in Hilton head South Carolina and I'm speaking
with Andrew Carmines the proprietor of Hudson's
restaurant and Andrew, I think this is a family
affair restaurant. Yes ma'am I'm second
generation my parents bought the restaurant in
nineteen seventy five from Benny and his wife Barbara
Hudson of course and you know back before that it
was an oyster packing facility. Going back to the
20's. So definitely, the longest standing
restaurant in Hilton Head. We're delighted to be with you
today and one of the things I want to talk
about briefly is that we really want to encourage
people to eat South Carolina seafood as much
as possible. Absolutely, I mean you know the great
thing about eating local seafood in South Carolina
is that you know that seafood is coming off the
boats into the table and and the freshness just
speaks for itself. Your shrimp I believe is
delivered right here to where we're sitting. That's
right, well we have to license seventy four foot
shrimp trawlers. Actually sister vessels run by two
brothers that are third generation shrimpers. Their
dad docked here. At Hudson's Frankie their
names are Jeff and Skip him or Frankie their dad
dog here and his father used to have the property
next door back in the fifties. Wow, and so you
put up how much shrimp every year and serve how much? Well,
we probably last year served about a hundred and
twenty thousand pounds of shrimp. All of which was
off of one of those two boats and you know in the
off season will actually freeze some of that shrimp
so that we still have that beautiful chemical free
east coast white shrimp for our guest, when the seasons
not on. Well we came today to see something
absolutely fascinating and that is softshell crab
production, or how you get those. That's right. It's
just been the most wonderful nature
experience I've ever had. So tell our viewers a
little bit about how you start how you get these
crabs to begin with. I'll give it my best shot.
OK. We start with about two hundred crab pots and
we set 'em at a normal location, right here in the
creeks and the inner coastal. Where you would
normally set crab pots for hard shell blue crabs. The
same critter. Just like when we would be on
vacation at Paulies and you put one off to the back of the
island of somebody's dock. Exactly see what, exactly
and you know when you're at Paulies. You probably use
some type of fish or chicken. Chicken neck. Or
whatever. Instead of using traditional bait when we
fish for peeler crabs which are the crabs that
are going to shed their shell, we use a male crab
or a jimmy crab. And we put that where you would normally
put the bait and the crab trap. What the male crab
does this time of year because it's breeding
season, the male crab puts off a pheromone or a
musk, and that musk attracts the virgin, not
just virgin females but females crabs that are looking
to breed. The idea being that the female crabs
gonna find that male crab and when she finds that
male crab she's gonna shed her shell, allow the
male crab to breed her and then the male crab will
protect her until her shell hardens up, which
only takes about ten hours. Wow. So, the the point here
is what we're trying to do is capture them when they
after they find the male crowd once they start the
process which can take between four and five days,
and then we take that female crab and we look at
the shell underneath and if she has a red or orange
marking we know that that crab is very close to
shedding. Now the orange marking will be on the
back fin. On the apron? or on that apron. Correct.
This is a perfectly normal part of their life and
crab shed all the time. You said throughout their
lifetime. Every time they get bigger they're shedding.
Right so a blue crab will shed it's shell between
fifteen and twenty times randomly. Yeah, well the
thing that makes this part of the year so unique is
that they're all doing it at the same time. So we can
capture that lightning in a bottle so to speak. Every
blue crab that we bring back to the restaurant we
have a flow through system. Which is a series of PVC
pipes that operate off of two pool pumps on the
floating dock and those pipes and pumps, pump sea
water into a flow through system where we have four
foot by eight foot by twelve inch deep tables,
and we bring those crabs with the red or orange
markings. put them in the flow through system and we
watch them intently and monitor them constantly.
Because if they start to lose their shell everybody
around them is gonna eat them up. That's right. You've got to
be in there saying like oh my goodness! I've got to
move this one to the next tank. Right. Cause this one is
getting ready. Yeah and then and the ones that are
still hard are here. So that's because you can't send
you're in there looking at them and looking for
certain things on them that are clues is that correct?
Thats right. So once we put the crabs in the flow through
system, there's essentially three different levels of
shedding. So there's a general population we call
it, which these are crabs that have the red or
orange marking, but they have not their shell has
not cracked yet. So we will go through every day
sometimes twice a day if the weather is really
pretty. And we'll feel underneath the shell of
all two thousand crabs in the flow through the
system. If the crab has a thin hairline crack
underneath the point of the the point. Of the, this the
point that sticks out on the edge. What they looking
under the on the underbelly I will feel
underneath that point and if it has a thin hairline
crack will move it into the next series of
tanks. In those tanks, the crowd will actually bust
in the back. Meaning the back of the shell. The the
shell that's going to ultimately come off will
pop open. like busting out of their britches. That's correct.
And then once that happens we'll move it into the
very last tank. There's only one tank for busted
crabs and in that tank the crab will continue to
open up and push its way out of the back of that
shell. And fortunately you said at that time they
come to kind of torpid almost and they're not going
to eat other. No they're pretty relaxed. So that's,
so they're safe when they're in there. Yeah. Because if we had
anybody who is active in there they would just eat each
other up. We do still watch them pretty carefully. So
one thing that's really interesting is that I
mentioned before, if you leave the crab in the
water in ten hours the shell will be completely
hard again. Whoa! Once you take the crab out of the
water the hardening stops completely. So the crab
will also eat the protective gel coating
or membrane that configuration that
protects the new shell from the former shell and
that'll help them harden up. Re-mineralize. That's right.
and I've heard that there's some other aquatic
species that do that as well. Well, let's talk about
some of the delicious ways that you prepare them. Well
we do have all kinds of ways. We actually I have
heard a lot of people tell me that they've never seen
such an extensive soft shell crab menu. So we have
about ten items that we offer daily. So we've got
here a just very simply fried soft shell crab. A very
simple with just a little bit of brown butter and lemon.
♪
And it's just as simple as it can be, crispy and wonderful.
Here we have a little bit of a fancier
item for those people that maybe don't want to
look at the crab while they're eating it.
This is a soft shell crab and
fried green tomato B.L.T. So we have local fried green
tomatoes. We have a tomato jam. Applewood smoked bacon
and a corn meal crusted fried softshell crab. I had
one of those tomatoes today at lunch. Boy oh boy oh boy!
♪
This looks like something that a chef got excited about. This is
something that's been around at Hudson's for a really long time.
And I think a guy named James Howell, the chef in the eighties
came up with. It's called a buster crab.
♪
And what we do is we pull the points up on the crab and we
stuff it with fresh jumbo lump crab meat. And then we serve it
over a toasted piece of French bread.
And then a dollop of but a good smattering of bearnaise sauce.
And you know for me I'm a purist.
I'm a lightly dust it with flour, pan
sautee it, a simple guy, but this one is a show
stopper and people that maybe don't want to look
at the crab as much but really love 'em, they enjoy that.
Yeah. Andy, this has just been so exciting! I can't wait
to taste these And if people want to know more
about Hudson's Restaurant and what you have
here and how to get here, what's the best way to
find out about it? I would recommend following us on
Instagram at Hudson's Seafood. We also have a
great website hudsonsonthedocks.com
There's some really interesting content out there. So if
you're looking to learn a little bit more about soft
shell crabs or oysters or shrimp, just Google us up
because there's a lot of good stuff on the internet
about some of the exciting things were doing. Well
everything that I've experience today has been
just about the best I've ever tasted. We're so
excited about being able to remind people that South
Carolina seafood is what it's all about. And that
you are one of many people who are trying to make
certain that it comes to all of us. Thank you so
much. Yes ma'am, Pleasure being here.
♪