TikTok user Chef Blake (@chefblakenola), who posts videos on the popular social media platform highlighting recipes that utilize her own seasoning and personally branded Air Fryer, recently faced criticism for uploading a clip that shows her seasoning and cooking crabs alive.
Many professional chefs will cook crustaceans alive by placing them in boiling water. It’s believed that this process ensures maximum freshness of the creatures which prevents potential illnesses while consuming them (lobsters and crawfish also fall under this category).
It used to be a prevailing thought that the nervous systems of crustaceans didn’t register pain. However, more updated research states that this isn’t the case, meaning that all of the lobsters and crabs being boiled, or in the case of Chef Blake, air fried alive, most definitely are aware they’re being cooked alive.
@chefblakenola I love seafood 🦞 and I love to cook it in my own Air Fryer www.chefblakenola.com #fyp #seafood #chefblakenola #nola #airfryer #chef #recipe #entrepreneur ♬ original sound – Chef Blake
In the clip, the TikToker tosses various ingredients into the air fryer, including sausages, seasonings, what appears to be rice, and oils.
“Hey y’all it’s Chef Blake and we’re back with another amazing recipe,” she says in a voice-over. “This time we’re gonna use seafood and we’re gonna use Chef Blake air fryer and Chef Blake seafood sprinkle that’s one of my favorite seasonings, no lie, no cap.”
It’s at this point in the video clip we see the TikToker begin to put live blue crabs into an air fryer. “OK we use some live crabs,” she explains. As the crustaceans are being placed in the cooking apparatus, they begin to struggle to escape. “OK we got some wrestle in the beginning but I mean they became very understanding and they cooperated I think that they enjoyed the seasoning their self,” she adds.
The TikToker then begins to pour various sauces over the crabs: “Then we put the same seasoning back on top again and some more of my seafood sprinkle, one of my favorite, of course, set our Air Fryer.”
After pressing some buttons and checking settings on the machine there’s a quick cut to the prepared meal, showing the crabs cooked along with all of the other accoutrements.
“Boom, boom, bam, bom didn’t take long. You don’t got to stand over no pot. Nope,” Chef Blake concludes. “Now watch me crack this baby open and I’m just ’bout to enjoy this seafood and this crab. And you should too. If you like it, share it, try it out, let me know what you think.”
Many commenters who saw the post did let her know what they thought, and they had mixed feelings about the fact that she was air-frying crabs while they were still alive.
“Could you hear them fighting for their lives after the air fryer started heating up?” one viewer asked.
“So you heat the crabs to death,” another wrote.
“This is fucking cruel,” a third argued.
Others were just shocked that she put live crustaceans into an air fryer and cooked them.
“Wait u can put live crab in the airfryer,” one user asked.
“It looks amazing but I have one question: you didn’t put foil down or nothing?” another questioned.
Chef Blake’s video may have been posted to TikTok, but when it was uploaded to Twitter, it received over 11,000 shares and 92,800 likes.
“Oooh man. Maybe the vegans have a point,” one Twitter user shared.
“Imagine the crab that’s next watching his homie get his exoskeleton ripped off!” a second tweeted.
“Watching stuff like this I see why Vegans and vegetarians finally decide to stop eating meat,” a third user wrote. “This is an insane level of cruelty. Like it’s really disgusting.”
Others showed other videos of folks preparing crabs alive, like another cook who ripped the top shell of one alive on camera.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Chef Blake via email for further comment.
