Crawfish Boil
TIME/SERVINGS
Makes: 10 to 15 servings
Why not do your own boil? Many reputable outfits, such as Tony’s Seafood, Louisiana Crawfish Company, and Crawfish Company of Central Florida, will ship live crawfish on ice at reasonable prices. Gregg Sedotal, a crawfish fisherman from Pierre Part, Louisiana (“Cajun Country”), gave us this recipe.
Game plan: Unless you bought them prepurged, the crawfish will have to be soaked in an ice chest full of fresh water for about 10 minutes before cooking, to clean their exterior and cause them to spit up the swampy muck in their intestines.
Special equipment: A Bayou Classic 80-quart aluminum stockpot with a strainer insert is a must. If you want to do the boil outside, which is traditional and highly recommended, an outdoor gas burner is necessary as well. If you don’t have either, borrow ’em; if you can’t borrow ’em, buy ’em—they’re available as a set that you can use again at Thanksgiving to fry your turkey.
Published March 22, 2007
- 1 (35-pound) sack live crawfish
- 1 (12-ounce) bottle Crystal Hot Sauce
- 1 to 2 (26-ounce) boxes of table salt
- 3 ounces Zatarain’s Shrimp & Crab Boil liquid concentrate (3/4 of a 4-ounce bottle)
- 3 ounces cayenne pepper
- 8 to 10 medium new potatoes, such as Red Bliss or Yukon gold
- 4 small yellow onions, cut in half
- Find out if your crawfish have been purged. If they haven’t, soak in fresh water for 10 minutes (some people say you need to salt—you don’t).
- While you’re waiting, fill an 80-quart pot (fitted with a strainer insert) halfway with water and bring to a boil over a large outdoor burner over high heat. Add hot sauce, salt, Zatarain’s, and cayenne pepper.
- Add potatoes and onions to the pot. (No need to peel either.) Boil vegetables for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, cover a table with newspapers, flattened cardboard boxes, or plastic trays for serving the crawfish.
- Add half the crawfish to the pot. After 5 minutes turn off the heat, cover, and let the crawfish steep to absorb the flavors for 15 to 20 minutes. Drain and dump onto the table. Repeat with the rest of the crawfish (you can boil 2 to 3 batches of crawfish in the same water-seasoning mixture).
- Eat plain or with dippin’ sauces like cocktail sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, or Tabasco.
Beverage pairing:
If you want to be authentic, drink Abita Beer, brewed in Abita Springs, Louisiana. Outside of Louisiana you can get it here.
COMMENTS | ADD YOUR OWN
I have to disagree with the beer. I don't think my Cajun ancestors ever tasted Abita Beer, maybe Jax, Falstaff or Dixie. So, no, I don't think you need Abita to be authentic. It's a relative newcomer to the scene.
Also, if it's not Friday, I would definitely recommend adding some smoked pork sausage to the pot. Cut in serving size pieces of 2-3". It gives a nice flavor and helps the crawfish just slip right out of the shell.
I go along with Cajungirl, but where's the Garlic, and lemons. I throw in some artichokes with th vegetables. The tender part of the leaves are delicious. And if you really want something tasty, cook some crab with the crawfish. They aren't cooked enough at the first boiling so you put them back and remove them at the end of the second boiling only letting them soak about 5 minutes of the last crawfish soaking. I put them in onion sacks. makes it easier to remove from the crawfish. I boil shrimp and crab like that too. The crab absorbs some of the shrimp or crawfish taste. Man, that's good yeah.
Zatarains also makes a spice bag for boils. Every boil I've been to, the host has used the bag AND the liquid concentrate.
Gotta add corn, andouille, asparagus, and artichokes. Folks add peanuts in the shell as well.
Yeah, I was thinking that it needed to be a lot spicier- but then I like the corn to be able to melt my lips off when eating it!
As far as beer goes, I found out the other day a beer that does *not* go with crawfish- Guiness! Something about the spices makes a glass of Guiness taste horrible!
I'm a fan of adding red potatoes, corn, heads of garlic, and mushrooms to the boiling pot.
As an added bonus, the crab boiled potatoes make killer country hashbrowns the next morning and the mushrooms are wonderful in omelets. This is just assuming you have any leftovers.
If you have any leftover crawfish, peel and save them. I prefer to make crawfish alfredo with leftovers, or a bisque.
What do I think? I think you all keep me hungry all of the time and I love it.
*G*
I think the best combination for a crawfish boil is of course Crawfish, Garlic, Potatoes, Corn, and Mushrooms. And the best part is after youre done, throw the rest in the fridge and eat them the next day. The time in the fridge allows the flavor to set in. Ive had problems last crawfish season finding good size crawfish, however. I visited Cajun Grocer on the internet and they actually ship you live crawfish through FedEx the next day and they were great. Heres the link if anyone is interested: http://www.cajungrocer.com/fresh-food...
Naw ya talkin with adding the garlic, sausage, artichokes, corn and new potatoes to the boil. But I bet not many of you have added some raw boudin links to the boil. Just wrap up each link tight in some foil and put in the boil for about 15 minutes and you got some good spicy boudin to spread on your French bread with that garlic too! Aieeee......