It’s time for a Cajun crawfish boil
We’re getting close to the tail end (pun intended) of this year’s crawfish season, which runs through June, but if you do a bit of looking, you should be able to find a place where you can still buy a sack of live Arkansas or Louisiana mudbugs you can serve at your next backyard dinner party.
You also might consider trying to obtain some crawfish the old-fashioned way — by catching them yourself.
One simple way of doing this is to turn rocks and leaves in the riffles of a mountain stream and catch darting crawfish with your hands. Watch those pincers! You can drop the mudbugs in a pillow case or floating fish basket like anglers use so you can keep them wet and alive until you’re ready to cook them.
Some people also like to use the fishing-line method. Tie a piece of bacon directly on your line. You don’t need a hook, sinker or bobber. Lower the bacon to the bottom of a stream or pond. When crawdads grab hold, you’ll feel them moving about. All you have to do is swing ’em into a bucket or cooler.
Here’s another method. Remove the necks of several 1-gallon plastic milk jugs above the handle. Bury each jug in the bottom of a stream or pond with the jug’s opening protruding slightly. Bait with chunks of slab bacon. At night, crawfish enter the traps but can’t escape. You may catch a dozen per trap daily.
It’ll take you some time to catch enough crawfish for a dinner party using those first three methods. More likely, you’ll catch just enough to serve one or two people. If you purchase a commercial crawfish trap and follow manufacturer’s instructions for use, however, you can catch dozens of pounds in a much shorter time. Be sure you have permission to set the traps and know the local regulations. Good places to set the traps include flooded crop fields, ditches, adjacent rice fields and open water in marshes and overflow wetlands.
With this year’s high water in many parts of eastern Arkansas, here’s one more method I’ve used to quickly catch hundreds of pounds of big red crawfish. When the water recedes from the woodlands and fields, thousands upon thousands of crawfish are left behind. They’ll quickly start burrowing into the ground, where they’ll stay during much of the year. But if you time it just right, arriving within a day or two of when the water has just fallen out, you can walk across the damp earth and gather up all the crawfish you want. I like to carry a fish basket to put them in while I’m snatching them up; then when the basket is full, I dump the mudbugs in a big cooler for delivery to home.
A word of warning is in order if you decide to try this method. Some of these huge rusty-red crustaceans have pincers that make them look like Maine lobsters. And if you don’t learn to grab the crawfish properly each time, it’s almost inevitable that you’re going to get pinched. If it’s a really big crawfish, it could pinch hard enough to draw blood. So try this at your own risk. And be careful. Those pinches hurt! You’ll get your revenge, though, when your crawfish dinner is served.
Regardless of how you obtain the main course, a Cajun crawfish boil provides a really good excuse to socialize and enjoy a grand meal. Just be sure you’re prepared. When word leaks out that you’re hosting a crawfish boil, friends you never knew you had are likely to drop in. Be sure you have plenty of crawfish to feed everyone, at least 2 to 3 pounds of whole live crawfish per person.
Use the following recipe as a guide, and modify it to your own tastes — more vegetables or less, spicier or not. Everything you need to know is here, including the equipment you’ll need and a guide to purging crawfish so they’ll be tastier.
C’est si bon, cher! It’s so good.
CRAWFISH BOIL
Ingredients needed: 30 pounds live crawfish 1 (26-ounce) box salt
(for purging crawfish) Water
2 (1-pound) boxes/bags crawfish,
crab and shrimp boil seasoning 6 lemons, sliced in half
2 pound small onions, peeled 2 pounds smoked or andouille
sausage, cut into large pieces 2 pounds small red or new potatoes,
unpeeled
15 ears of fresh corn on the cob,
shucked and broken in halves 6 heads of garlic, split in half,
exposing pods
Equipment needed:
1 60- to 80-gallon boiling pot
with basket and lid Outdoor propane cooker
Large tub or ice chest
Large paddle for stirring crawfish Large picnic table with plenty of newspapers to cover it, several rolls of paper towels and a large garbage can.
Purging crawfish:
Purge and thoroughly wash the crawfish before boiling. Pour them in a large tub or ice chest, add the salt on top, and cover with water. Gently stir with the paddle for 3 minutes, then rinse the crawfish, drain all water, and keep the crawfish in a cool area until cooking time. Throw away all dead crawfish before cooking.
Boiling crawfish:
• Prepare the crawfish in two batches, using half the ingredients in each.
• Add enough water to your boiling pot to fill it halfway. Squeeze the juice from half the lemons into the water; toss the lemon halves in.
• Add 1 pound crawfish, crab and shrimp boil seasoning. Cover the pot, turn the burner on full blast, and bring the water to a boil. Boil 3 minutes, allowing the spices to mix well.
• Using the wire basket, add half the onions, sausage, potatoes, corn and garlic. Maintain a boil, and cook 10 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
• Add 15 pounds crawfish to the wire basket, and bring the water to a rolling boil. Boil 5 minutes. Turn the burner off, keep the pot covered, and let the crawfish soak 20 minutes. Remove the wire basket from the pot, and let the crawfish drain. Serve steaming hot, spread along the length of the newspaper-covered table. The full 30 pounds of crawfish will serve 6 to 15 people, depending on how much they like crawfish.
Got leftovers? Peel the tail, then freeze them in zip-seal freezer bags or, better, after packaging them using a vacuum-sealer. Now you have crawfish you can use to make etouffee, gumbo, jambalaya, po’boys or other delicious entrees. Enjoy.