Crawfish Boil

This mother’s day my Dad boiled crawfish for the entire family.  Some how us mother’s get wrangled in to thinking crawfish is what we would like to enjoy, well heck yes it is.  We just love it.  And it means we don’t have to cook. Double win. It really is a special treat and I took picture to document the whole process of my Dad cooking them.  He simply has the best style of cooking, they are easy to peel slightly spicy, but won’t burn your lips.  The kind that you could sit around for hours eating.  My dad always buys lots and lots, he figures around 5lbs per person, so if your having a small gathering of crawfish eating people, always get extra, its no fun to run out.

To start you will need to set up your boiling pot and flame, my dad has this huge one.

Set the water to boil while you gather your ingredients

If your crawfish need purging, simply put them in a large cooler add water and salt, let them sit for 30 minutes or so.

Dump the water and repeat once then dump, sit 30 more minutes and add just fresh water.

The salt causing them to poop out all the dirt, kinda gross, but at least you won’t be eating it.  Some purchased crawfish are already purged so be sure to ask.

Also make sure your crawfish are all alive, if you find any dead be sure to toss them out.  If they get missed and you see a boiled crawfish with a straight tail, don’t eat it, it was dead before cooking.  Crawfish should have a curled tail once cooked.

Once the water is boiling it’s time to start the potatoes, Dad adds 1 8oz crawfish boil and salt.

Simply  cut up larger red potatoes or if they are small just leave them whole.

Remember this is a huge pot of water so season well.

Add about 2 tsp cayenne pepper, and another 4 oz crawfish boil.

a good splash of Worcestershire sauce

and a few good splashes of tabasco, let that boil about 5-7 minutes

Then take some frozen corn on the cob

and add them in, they only take about 5 minutes to cook.

When they are cooked go ahead and add them to a cooler

To the same water add more cayenne

salt

garlic powder

tabasco

1 whole lemon juice

and 2 onions, quartered.

Stir the witches brew, as my dad likes to call it.

Once the water is back up to boil,

add about half of a 35 lb bag, straight in the pot.

They will bubble

and start to float to the top.

Dad added more salt. Salt is your friend here you don’t want them to be bland.

Stir the witches brew.

and wait until the the water reaches a rolling boil about 7 minutes, then cut the flame off and let it sit for 20 minutes.

If you let it cook longer the crawfish are over done and hard to peel.

After the 20 minutes wait.

Pull them from the water and pour into another big cooler, this helps keep them hot.

So if you’ve never eaten crawfish, here a little step by step guide to peeling the bad boys.

Take the crawfish in both hands and simply crack down the head and tail.

The meat will pull out of the cavity.

Then peel the first section of the tail shell and simply pull it off.

Then grab the top of the meat, and pinch the end of the tail and pull out!

and dip in your favorite red sauce (recipe below), enjoy!

If the claws are big enough, you can also pop out the claw meat, just as you would with crabs.

Dad also likes to pop open the head cavity and get out the extra yellow stuff or some people even just suck it out!

Me, I skip this step.

We like to eat this family style, we pull out a couple beer flats fill them with crawfish, sit back enjoy!

What’s your favorite way to eat crawfish?  Or have you had crawfish before?

Print This RecipeOur favorite red Cocktail sauce

1 50 bottle of ketchup

3 T cream horseradish

1 tsp tabasco

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp black pepper

1 lemon juiced

2 T Worcestershire sauce

Dump the entire contents of the ketchup into a large bowl, add all ingredients, stir well and re-fill bottle. There will be extra just serve immediately or put into another container.

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