Mudbug Time!!!
pointman
1,042 Posts
It's that time of the year. Time for Crawfish and I can't tell you how stoked I am to get back to my roots and eat tons of these little bastards.Who's with me? 
Comments
We're moving to Charleston SC soon and I can't wait to get in on that shit...
Damn you, now I'm hungry again...and I smashed some popeye's like 2 hours ago...
Now, you got me started...
Used to catch crawfish in the ditch that ran behind my house in Harvey, LA. My neighborhood had a defunkt golf course that ran through it, with a ditch marking the borders between course and home lots.
We used nets like this one:
You could tie almost any old thing (ham, chicken bone, hot dog, etc.) onto the middle of the net and the crawfish would walk right on up to it. Then you lift the net with a stick and grab the crawfish and throw them into a bucket.
True story: Live crawfish can be easily put to sleep by gently caressing their bellies.
Then you gotta flick em on the head to snap em out of it.
Crawfish boils were always the shit. Wash the crawfish and then soak them in rock salt...which helps them purge their waste. At our house, we had an old beer keg that had an end cut off that we used for a boiling pot. Then of course a big butane burner. Zatarain's is the preferred brand of spice...just make sure to throw a whole lot extra in there. Potatoes, corn, cloves of garlic, and halfed lemons first and then the crawfish.
When they're done, make sure not to eat the crawfish that aren't curled up. Unless you just caught them and are able to account for them, you don't know how long a straight one...meaning it was dead before it went in the pot...was dead. It very well could be rotten, so just toss those aside.
Shoal Creek Saloon here in Austin has been advertising Friday and Saturday afternoon crawfish boils the past few weeks. There was even a big crawfish festival here last (Texas Relays) weekend with Parliament/Funkadelic headlining. I dunno, I'm kinda holding out for a house party for a taste of this year's crawfish. Surely, one will spring up soon. That, or it's on at my house soon.
You lucky bastards
Actually, this should come sooner. Suck dem juices outta dere. Squeeze it even as you do it so you get some of the head fat as well...yum.
So you just rip through them one by one?
The corn and potato thing up there looks pretty good.
How many would you eat in an average sitting?
I want that so bad, but they're not in my area.
Cooked crawfish is typically sold by the pound. 1 pound = a hearty snack. 2 pounds is more along the lines of a meal. But to do crawfish up right, you gotta have a party where dozens upon dozens upon dozens of pounds are spread on a newspaper-covered table and you just sit there for hour after hour after hour eating crawfish and swigging beer.
Threw in some whole onions,potatoes,and sausage.
Laid out a gang of newspaper and dumped the whole joint onto the table.
Broke out ALL my hot-sauces and went to work on suckin the heads.....
I usually do this w/ Shrimp, but whenever my local market has Bugs, its on.
Next up.....Crab Boil.
Yep, that's a good move.
or cold ones from this brewery
Either will do but you never, I mean NEVER drink fancy beer with crawfish.
Do note the Zatarain's.
Not sure about the asparagus though...
Maaaan, I heard Dixie is out of business due to the hurricane. Is this true? RIP?
I know I haven't found that shit anywhere since Katrina came through.
Thus the