{"id":137803,"date":"2026-01-17T14:34:48","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T14:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/137803\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T14:34:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T14:34:48","slug":"an-sf-chefs-water-to-table-guide-to-throwing-an-epic-dungeness-crab-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/137803\/","title":{"rendered":"An SF chef\u2019s water-to-table guide to throwing an epic Dungeness crab feast"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cloud of garlic-scented steam billows from the open oven as chef Jason Halverson crouches in front of a tray of roasted, butter-slick Dungeness crab. \u201cOh, my God, I love you,\u201d he says, gazing at the bounty of locally caught shellfish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In about 25 minutes, a dozen friends and colleagues will fill his Marina District apartment for what has become an annual tradition: a blowout feast to celebrate the start of Dungeness season. In addition to heaping platters of fresh, bay-caught crab, the evening\u2019s menu includes pasta drowned in a luscious sauce bolstered with crab fat, plus salad and heaps of crispy fried chicken.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before launching Hi Neighbor Hospitality \u2014 the group behind The Vault Steakhouse, Trestle, Mama Oakland, and 7 Adams \u2014 in 2014, Halverson cooked at La Folie, Michael Mina, and others. But even if he has more kitchen experience than most, he\u2019s adamant that any home cook can pull off a crab feast of their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHosting this kind of dinner is ballsy,\u201d he says, \u201csince your house can get the brunt of it, between the crab shrapnel and lingering smells of garlic and butter. But it\u2019s high risk, high reward \u2014 and so much fun.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Two\"A\"A<\/p>\n

The first step to hosting a crab feast is to get your hands on some crab. For the past three years, Halverson has purchased his from the boats at Fisherman\u2019s Wharf. This year, he headed to Pier 47 at 6 a.m. on a Sunday to get first-of-the-season crabs from Shawn Chen Flading\u2019s boat FV KVINS.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To transport the crab, Halverson uses a rolling, khaki-colored Yeti Tundra cooler packed with ice. Though most of the wharf\u2019s crab sellers accept Venmo or Zelle, cash is preferred \u2014 and he has plenty of it. This year, Dungeness off the boat costs $11 per pound, or roughly $25 per crab. Halverson\u2019s haul \u2014 21 crabs, including 14 for the feast and a few to give to neighbors and friends \u2014 costs $421.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ideal timeframe for eating is immediately. \u201cYou really don\u2019t want to try to store them any longer than 36 hours,\u201d Halverson says. If you have to keep your crabs alive for a few hours, he suggests covering them with damp newspaper or, better yet, a layer of seaweed, which you can sometimes get from the folks on the boat. \u201cWhat you want to do is try to store them kind of as cold as possible, without freezing,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I like to try to keep some type of moisture on them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Because Halverson has to cook dozens of crabs, he heads to the kitchen at The Vault Steakhouse, where he can take advantage of the commercial stove and abundance of prep space. He brings water to a boil in a massive stainless steel stock pot, adding a spice mix of salt, cayenne pepper, fennel seed, and coriander seed in equal parts, a concoction he picked up while working at La Folie. If you\u2019re boiling crab at home, he suggests using an 8-quart stock pot, which should fit two crabs. Add about one cup of spice mix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since he plans to roast the crabs in butter after they\u2019re boiled, Halverson slightly undercooks the meat. About 10 minutes at a roiling boil usually does the trick. Then he puts them in an ice bath and, once they\u2019ve cooled, begins the messy work of breaking them down. \u201cRip off the head first \u2014 the top, the cabeza,\u201d Halverson says, referring to the top shell. It will be filled with \u201cfatty goodness,\u201d which you should set aside to use for pasta sauce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, Halverson flips the crab over to remove the apron, innards, and gills. He takes what\u2019s left \u2014 essentially just the legs and claws \u2014 and cuts them into fourths, once down the middle where the abdomen used to be, then in half. \u201cI like going down to quarters, because it doesn\u2019t make you feel obligated to grab so much,\u201d he says. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to have such a full plate at all times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A\"Hands\"Crab\"Hands<\/p>\n

The rest of the party prep takes place at home. While the oven heats to 450 degrees, Halverson makes a compound butter, which is when his secret ingredient comes into play: Boursin, the soft, Gournay-style cheese. \u201cI think this came about by accident \u2014 I was cooking, and I didn\u2019t have enough butter,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I had, for some reason, a lot of Boursin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He discovered that, unlike butter, which ends up pooling at the bottom of the pan, the cheese clings to the shells. This has become his go-to technique, mixing approximately equal parts of room-temperature butter with Boursin studded with herbs, plus whatever alliums he has on hand \u2014 usually a fistful of chives and a minced shallot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After everything is blended (Halverson\u2019s restaurant-style method is to pull on a pair of disposable gloves and mix everything by hand), he rubs each piece of crab with as much of the butter-cheese mixture as he can make stick. He transfers the butter-covered crab to a rimmed baking sheet, being careful not to overcrowd it, and roasts it in the oven for about 15 minutes. \u201cYou end up having this coating where you\u2019re licking your fingers of Boursin and garlicky, cheesy butter,\u201d Halverson says. \u201cIt makes it a little bit more fun \u2026 a little bit more robust.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This year, the salad is made with a few things he had in the fridge: shaved radicchio, sliced persimmons and apples, and a lemon vinaigrette. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t always have to be your traditional salad, but because we have lots of richness and lots of fat and garlic and super pungent flavors, we want a little bit lighter and sweeter,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like, follow your heart.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the pasta that\u2019s the sleeper hit. To make it, Halverson tosses the extra shells and other would-be discards into a pan with a generous nub of butter until just roasted, \u201cso it becomes very aromatic.\u201d Then he adds tomato paste and a splash of white wine, before filling the rest of the pot with water. In about 25 minutes, he has a quick crab stock. In a new pan, he sweats garlic, fennel, and onion, then adds cherry tomatoes and a cup or two of the stock. After letting it reduce, he bolsters it further with the fat he set aside earlier, which he has since transformed to a smooth paste with an immersion blender.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He finishes the parboiled pasta in the sauce, letting the noodles cook to a perfect al dente as the sauce thickens. \u201cI don\u2019t want to call it a pro move, but I\u2019ve started to steer away from strand pastas,\u201d he advises. \u201cI love extruded and tube pastas\u201d \u2014 rigatoni, penne, fusilli \u2014 \u201conly because they\u2019re better to serve. It\u2019s less of a mess on your plate, and it\u2019s easier for sharing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

By now, Halverson\u2019s guests have started to arrive and are sipping Champagne while he ferries food to a long, butcher-paper-covered table set up in the middle of the living room. Bubbles are the chef\u2019s choice to drink with crab, though the evening\u2019s pairings also include a zippy bottle of Austrian white: Emmerich Knoll Gr\u00fcner Veltliner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With crab crackers in hand and plastic bibs tied around their necks, the guests make quick work of the Dungeness over two hours, filling tabletop metal buckets with empty shells and crumpled paper napkins. By meal\u2019s end, nearly everyone has torn off their bibs and is leaning back in their chairs, smiling and smelling of seafood and garlic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, Halverson ushers everyone out the door to tackle the mountain of dishes. In addition to a box of leftover fried chicken, he dispenses a few parting words of wisdom for anyone attempting to re-create the epic dinner party for themselves: \u201cHave fun, have a big trash can ready to go, and there\u2019s never too much butter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cloud of garlic-scented steam billows from the open oven as chef Jason Halverson crouches in front of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[414,35067,47468,101,103,102,14494,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-137803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-chefs","tag-eat-here","tag-fishermans-wharf","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-seafood","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}