Lunch: She-Crab Soup

Recipe by Matt Lee & Ted Lee She-crab soup might just be this city's most overworked culinary icon—so much so that in restaurants of quality in Charleston, you can detect more than a few chefs assiduously avoiding it. But an expertly made she-crab soup i

Ingredients

6 live hard-shell sooks (female blue crabs with roe)
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup finely minced shallots (2 to 3 large)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 quart half-and-half
1 tablespoon plus 4 teaspoons dry sherry, preferably fino, plus more for serving
1 1/2 cups picked lump, backfin, or jumbo lump crab meat
Chopped fresh chives (optional)

Instructions

Bring a large pasta pot two-thirds full of water to a boil, and using tongs, transfer 2 of the crabs to the pot. Cook until their shells turn bright orange, about 3 minutes, then transfer the cooked crabs to a colander set in the sink and run cold water over them. Add the next 2 crabs to the pot and repeat until all the crabs have been cooked.

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