This crowd-pleasing feast brings together blue crabs, potatoes, corn, sausage and fresh vegetables all boiled in an aromatic broth and drenched in garlic butter. Piled high on a table lined with toasted baguettes and served family-style, it's messy and made for sharing with cold beer and good company.

Crab boils are one of my favorite things. The crabs themselves can present difficulties, depending on the consumers' familiarity with operating a hot, cooked crab, but hey, life isn't always easy. Take the time to teach how to enjoy the crabs, but also to enjoy that the process is not only hard, but rewarding.

I prefer Toadfish Crab Claw Cutters and have yet to find anything that comes close to these as far as incising blue crab claws. Beyond this you'll just need some coolers full of very cold drinks and lots and lots of paper towels.

Start this boil process at least 1 hour before serving, allowing enough time for the water to come to a boil (which will depend on the strength of your propane burner). Have all the ingredients ready to go; bread is cut, green beans picked and the crabs looking fine, if not belligerent.

I do love a variety of non-traditional items in a boil, from snap peas to asparagus to artichokes. Basically, if it's good with garlic butter on it, it can come to the party. Having mushrooms, peas and green beans in addition to the traditional potatoes and corn really makes it much more interesting. Tender vegetables like green beans and asparagus need to only be added at the very end and cooked until just tender and still vibrantly green.

The finest sausage I've ever tried in a crab boil is Filipino longanisa. This sausage is loaded with garlic and sugar, then smoked. This garlic piquancy and sweetness is a beautiful foil for boiled seafood and I'll generally make a few pounds of it every year (from feral hogs) just for adding into boils. Andouille is also great, but once you have the Filipino sausage, you likely won't go back.

Another good trick here is to build a baguette fence around the serving table. As the garlic butter-soaked seafood, sausages and vegetables travel from the center of the table to the guest, the inevitable dripping, coupled with the pooling butter, sausage fat and crab juice on the table starts to soak the dry-toasted bread. Toward the end of the meal, the bread is starting to get pretty ready to be eaten, having become a delicious sponge for all of these things. Just a suggestion.

Extra shakers of crab boils and paper towels are necessary, too. I like to line the table first with plastic wrap, then newspaper for an incredibly easy cleanup at the end. In the unlikely event of uneaten crabs or crawfish, we usually sit around the table and pick meat for future uses, like risotto, pasta, ravioli, empanadas, crab dip, crab cakes, etc. Leftover shells can, and absolutely should be used for making shellfish stock, which has wonderful and highly useful applications. Save a couple cups of the leftover boil for Martinis, micheladas or cooking potatoes, if you want.

What to drink with a crab boil? Lemonade, beer, white wine, sparkling wine. It doesn't matter as long as it's very cold. I like to position a couple of well-iced coolers around the table for easy access, as beverages seems to disappear at a more rapid-than-normal rate during these meals.

Featured in the Crabs Video.

Serves 8-10

The Butter

3 pounds butter

20 cloves garlic, finely chopped

The Boil

10-12 cups Crab Boil Seasoning, plus more in shakers on the table

5 onions, peeled and quartered

40 button mushrooms

30-40 live and frisky blue crabs, or 60-80 cleaned halves

40 small potatoes (about 1 1/2" in diameter)

2 pounds green beans, trimmed

2 pounds snap or snow peas

10 wild boar Filipino longanisa sausages (The Hog Book, page 333), halved, or other smoked sausages like Andouille

10 ears fresh corn, halved

4-5 long baguettes, cut in half longways

Equipment:

Propane burner

Propane

Large pot with insert

Clean cooler or large bus tub(s)

Wooden paddle for stirring

Grill or oven for toasting bread

Shakers full of crab boil seasoning

Crab crackers

Make the butter: Melt the butter and garlic over very low heat for about 20 minutes until fragrant. Keep warm.

Get a grill going to toast the baguettes, or preheat an oven.

In a large pot with an insert, or in a crawfish boiler, bring 10 gallons of water, the crab boil spice, the onions and the mushrooms to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes.

Add the potatoes, then the live crabs. Bring back to a boil. Boil the crabs and potatoes for 10 minutes, then kill the fire.

Add the green beans, sausages, corn and snap peas, stir well and allow to soak for 10 minutes.

Toast or grill the cut side of the baguettes.

Make sure the green beans, peas and sausages are hot and cooked to your liking. If they are not, let them soak for another couple of minutes.

Have ready your serving table, unimpeded by beer bottles and the like.

Drain everything in the pot very well and pour the contents, carefully, into a very clean cooler or large bus tubs. Pour the butter over and mix very well so the butter coats everything.

Create a baguette border around the edge of the table.

Carefully scatter the contents of the pot down the table within the baguette fence. Serve with beer, paper towels and additional crab spice in shakers.