Maybe you don’t need to get your crab canned since you’re near the coast, but I do since I’m in the great Midwest.

Canned pasteurized crab is pretty good stuff, but not as good the fresh picked stuff (even from frozen crabs), and not usually as good as the fresh picked stuff I can sometimes get at the supermarket seafood counter in plastic tubs (especially around Christmastime), but it’s definitely way better than that super-salty-but-otherwise-unflavored stuff in the cans on the supermarket shelf. And while fresh picked tubbed crab, when I can get it out here in exurbia, has a shelf life of something like a week or so, the canned, refrigerated stuff has a shelf life of a year or more—so that’s the stuff I keep around.

Costco carries this stuff. In fact, I did a gumbo on Sunday with the first can I got from there. I’d never tried their brand, Blue Star, but it was perfectly serviceable stuff, which makes me glad because it’s a lot cheaper than the black can Phillips’ brand that the gourmet stores carry.

I might have added to my original comment that my mother’s canned (i.e., “put up” in canning jars) gefilte fish must also be kept refrigerated. Since homemade gefilte fish lasts only a few days to a week in the fridge, and since freezing, while possible, dramatically changes the texture, my mother sometimes cans some of her fish—she only makes it for the Jewish holidays. The canned fish must still be refrigerated, but it lasts several months. It’s never really lasted long enough to tell just how long.