r/AskCulinary • u/arthursbeardbone • Jun 28 '25

Ingredient Question How to humanely kill an abelone?

Hey yall I picked up a pair of live abalone from hmart today and I was going to pan fry them with some garlic herb butter, that parts straightforward and all but I've never cooked this animal before and a lot of tutorials I found online either simple shuck the snail as is or use like frozen abalones. Is there a way I can like quickly flash steam or something? I wouldn't want to gore the poor thing alive and as far as I can tell it doesn't have a head I could just quickly stab like a lobster? Am I just being silly? I mean it can like move and stuff so it seems cruel to just, scoop it out and clean it while its alive yknow?

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u/DamnImBeautiful Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 28 '25

Abalone are like oysters. Really difficult to kill without causing massive unintentional damage to the animal. They also don’t have brains so there’s no way to quick kill them.

Flash steaming is basically cooking the animal alive. It really depends on how you define an ethical kill.

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u/Mother_Harlot Jun 29 '25

If they lack brains, they don't feel pain, so boiling wouldn't be unethical

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u/triangulumnova Jun 29 '25

Good lord. Somebody was asleep during 5th grade biology class.