Crawfish mac and cheese is easy and versatile with this basic béchamel sauce

I confess that one of my favorite parts of either making or going to a crawfish boil is what happens toward the end.

Everyone has eaten their fill of mudbugs, leaving behind a mess of heads, claws and tail shells scattered all over a newspaper-covered table. Any leftover corn and potatoes are cold. The sausage, long gone. But there are almost always still whole crawfish that didn’t get eaten.

Maybe they are the runts of the pot, the small ones that got picked over for the big guys. Maybe they were the last few crawfish sitting in the pot, where they soaked up all those seasonings. I like to sit around with whoever else is left at the table and peel all those tails, one by one.

One complaint about crawfish is that they are a lot of work for only a little bit of meat, but once I get in the flow of peeling them, it’s hard to stop, especially once you see the tails start to pile up.

My friends Roger and Emily have always hosted crawfish boils in the spring, usually around Easter. They bring all their friends and families together for a potluck, backyard egg hunt and crawfish boil, where no crawfish goes unopened.

I’ll never forget the first year I attended, Emily and her friends were glued to the table, peeling tails with gusto, knowing that in the coming weeks, they’d have enough crawfish meat for any number of Cajun dishes.

As I’ve become more of a crawfish lover myself, I’ve taken on this passion of not letting any crawfish meat go to waste. I love to eat the leftover tails anywhere I’d otherwise use shrimp, so on top of a bowl of buttery grits, in a po’boy or with pasta.

That’s how I found myself making a creamy crawfish mac and cheese last week after reporting on this year’s crawfish season, which was off to a slow start but is gaining steam. I had only a small handful of crawfish meat left, but it was the perfect amount to mix with a cheesy pasta.

Because I knew I would be eating the crawfish the next day, I didn’t freeze the tail meat, but if you aren’t going to be eating it in a day or two, the meat is best preserved in the freezer. You could use any kind of protein tossed into this mac, including grilled chicken breast or sauteed shrimp.

Any time I have a bunch of odds and ends in the cheese drawer, I shred or crumble all the cheeses and make a catch-all mac and cheese.

If the sauce feels off – too thick, too thin, too bland – all it takes is a little bit of extra cheese or a splash of pasta water or a pinch of salt to get it back on track. Use any kind of pasta you’d like here, and you can easily double the recipe if you want to have more servings.

When I made homemade mac and cheese most recently, I added about cup of leftover crawfish tail, which, as Emeril might say, definitely kicked this dish up a notch. – Addie Broyles

1⁄2 pound dried pasta (about 21⁄2 cups dried)

Salt and pepper, to taste

2 tablespoons salted butter

3 tablespoons flour

1 cup milk or cream

1 to 1 ⁄2 cups shredded cheese (Cheddar, Gouda, Colby Jack or a mix)

1⁄2 to 1 cup reserved pasta water

1⁄2 cup cooked and peeled crawfish tails (optional)

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add pasta. Cook according to package directions, reserving 1 cup of pasta water before draining. Set cooked pasta aside. In the same pot, add butter. Melt over medium heat and then sprinkle the flour on top, stirring frequently, as the flour starts to cook in the butter. Cook, continuing to stir so the flour doesn’t burn, for about 2 minutes.

Whisk in the milk or cream and continue to stir. As the milk warms up, the sauce will start to thicken. Add cheese and stir until melted. Pour in 1⁄2 cup of the reserved pasta water to thin out the sauce, adding more to reach desired consistency. Taste and add any additional salt or pepper.

Add the cooked pasta and the crawfish to the pot and stir well over medium heat until well combined. Serve.

Crawfish mac and cheese is an easy way to use up leftover crawfish or shrimp.