Snow Crab Clusters and Claws, Opilio and Bairdi, Sourced to Order

Product overview

Snow crab is the volume crab of the frozen seafood trade. Its long, slender legs hold sweet, fibrous white meat that pulls cleanly from the shell, and clusters cost markedly less than king crab legs, which makes them a mainstay of seafood buffets, crab boils, casual dining chains and retail freezer promotions. Like the other items on our list of premium products sourced on request, it is bought season by season against a buyer’s brief rather than carried in stock, because quotas and fishery openings move both availability and size profile from year to year.

The main commercial species is Chionoecetes opilio, traded simply as opilio or snow crab and landed in Atlantic Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Norway among other areas. Its larger relative Chionoecetes bairdi, sold as bairdi or tanner crab, gives heavier clusters and a thicker leg but comes from smaller fisheries that open only in some years. Atlantic Canadian supply concentrates in spring and early summer, while other fisheries open at different points in the calendar. Each offer names the species, the fishing area and the plant that cooked and packed the crab, so that buyers can check eligibility for their own market.

Snow crab is usually cooked in brine soon after landing and then brine-frozen. A cluster, also called a section, is half a crab: four walking legs and one claw joined at the shoulder. Clusters are graded by weight, often in ounce bands such as 5⁠–⁠8 oz, 8 oz and up or 10 oz and up, or in grams for metric markets. Other formats include cocktail claws, with the shell scored or removed above the pincer, leg and merus meat, and whole cooked crab. Raw frozen clusters are produced for some Asian buyers. Meat fill, meaning how fully the meat occupies the shell, varies with the time of year the crab was caught.

Because clusters are glazed to protect shell and meat in cold storage, comparing offers on gross weight alone can easily mislead a buyer. We state the glaze percentage and net weight for each lot, along with the cooking and freezing method, and list the documents the shipment will carry. For banquet menus that call for a larger, more striking leg, king crab is the natural step up, and our export quality assurance page explains how lot codes link each carton to its paperwork.