It doesn’t get any better than this.
Let’s get to it.
Ingredients:
- Corn, the sweeter the better. One corn for every 3lbs of crawfish
- Tony Chachere’s. Get the biggest can they’ll sell you.
- Butter. One stick for every 15 lbs of crawfish
- Honey. One bottle for every 15 lbs of crawfish
- Onions. One onion for every 6 lbs of crawfish
- Garlic. One garlic head for every 9 lbs of crawfish
- Oranges. I like small tangerines. One tangerine for every 3lbs of crawfish
- Bay Leaves. One bay leaf for every 9 lbs of crawfish
- Liquid Crab boil. This stuff is potent. One bottle for every 32ish lbs of crawfish
- Bag of traditional Crawfish boil seasoning powder. 2/3 bag for every 32ish lbs of crawfish
- Lemons. One lemon for every 3 lbs of crawfish
- Crawfish. Duh. A typical sack is 32 lbs and a typical person eats around 3 lbs
- Artichoke. One artichoke for every 9 lbs
- Louisiana hot sauce. Same principle as the Tony Chachere’s. Get the biggest bottle they’ll sell you
- Mushrooms. One box for every 9 lbs
- Sausage. You can get creative here. My preference is one two-link package of traditional andouille for every 9lbs of crawfish and one “wild card” package for every boil. Trust me on this, after 3 beers, and a bunch of crawfish, few things are as good as pulling out a piece of wild card jalapeño and cheddar sausage from the mix.
- One sack of small red potatoes for every sack. I’m not a huge potato guy. If you wanna throw in an extra sack more power to you. Just don’t blame me when no one compliments you on it.
Tools
- I use an 80 quart pot with a fitted strainer
- Standard outdoor burner
- Propane tank. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten everything prepared…then realized I had forgotten to get a full tank
Tips
- Rinds tend to be bitter. Many people will just chop the lemons in half (and oranges in this case) and toss them in. I’m not the biggest fan of this since it opens up the risk of a bitter taste getting into the food. Just juice them and pour the juice in.
- Do two batches per sack.
- Double cook the artichokes. Meaning put em back into the boil after the first batch.
- Use Louisiana original hot sauce. The one with the red cap and red dot on the label.
- When in doubt, under-season the first batch. You can always add spice, but you can’t remove it.
- Taste your broth before putting anything in. No seriously. Get brave and taste the water that you’re about to cook everything in. This step alone will improve your cooking ten fold. You’d be surprised how many people don’t do it.
- Purge your crawfish. Whether or not this really does a great deal of importance well…is besides the point. The purging process forces you to clean their bodies with salt which in a requirement. I purge twice. All this mean is fill your ice chest with water, pour a bunch of cheap table salt in the water, let sit for 5 minutes and drain. Twice.
- Make a Creole Aioli. Trust me. This stuff is perfect for the artichokes and offers a good dipping sauce if you’re looking for a flavor change of pace when pushing past the 3 lbs mark.
Steps
Crawfish boils are 90% prep work, 10% drinking beer. The instructions below are based on one 32ish lbs sack of crawfish cooked in two batches. If you’re going for more than one sack, be prepared to re-season your water after the second batch.
Fill your pot just over halfway full of water. Add in all of the seasoning powder and all of the liquid boil. Chop the oranges and lemons in half (all of them) and juice them into the water as well. Add in about 1/3 of a cup of Louisiana hot sauce to the water. Take half of your onions, chop off the ends, chop the remaining onion in half and peel away the inedible skins. Add em to the water. Add in all of your bay leaves. For the garlic, leave the head intact but peel away as much of the garlic paper as possible. Best case scenario is you expose the cloves but they remain attached to the base of the head. Drop in 2 garlic heads after cleaning them. I like dropping in my sausage from the get go, so add in half of your allotted sausage at this point.
Once you have the water prepped, light up the burner and get the water boiling. This will take longer than you expect it to. To speed things up place a lid on the pot to retain heat and open a beer.
Every now and then check on your water, once you see some steam/heat coming off of it feel free to drop in half of your potatoes, half of your corn, and all of your artichokes. Don’t do this to early, wait until the water is “imminently” about to boil.
Once the water is boiling you’ve got a good thing going on. Check the potatoes every 10 or so minutes to see how things are coming along. They take longer than corn, so they’re your best barometer. Here’s where buying the smallest red potatoes possible is important. If the potatoes are too large, their cook time will be too different than the corn cook time and you’ll end up having to stress about turning your corn into mush while waiting for the potatoes to finish. Don’t be that stressed out boiler, no one likes that guy.
Also, I like the way mushrooms taste. Some people put mushrooms in at the beginning with the potatoes and corn. I prefer to put the mushrooms in when the potatoes are about halfway done. They still retain their natural flavor while picking up some of the boil seasoning rather than just being a big splash of boil.
Every burner is different – potatoes usually take somewhere in the 20-25 min range but don’t stress out if they’re just not their yet. If you go past 30 minutes, consider pulling out the corn early and feeding people an “appetizer” as opposed to overcooking them. Pull out a potato in that 20ish minute range, cool it off, and eat it. If it’s done (or super close) than you’re ready.
Drop in your purged crawfish. Put the lid on and finish your beer. Should be about 5 minutes if your boil is rolling well. Take a peek after 5 minutes, if they’re floating and ruby red then their done. Kill the flame on the burner, put the lid back on, and let em rest for 10 or so minutes in the water.
Here’s where everyone does something different. Some serve directly after letting them rest in the water, some put them in a cooler, and some put them in a cooler and sprinkle some seasoning on top. Mine fall into a 4th category.
Pull up your strainer, drain the crawfish as best as possible (doesn’t need to be perfect) and dump into an empty ice chest. Drop in a roughly chopped up stick of butter, 2/3 a bottle of honey, and a generous amount of tony chachere’s. Shake the crap out of the ice chest.
Let it rest for 5 more minutes.
Dump on the table, find the artichokes, place the artichokes back into the pot, and eat everything else immediately.
Reignite the burner, throw in the rest of your veggies/sausage and repeat the steps. Usually batch 2 finishes cooking a little bit faster than batch 1 so keep an eye out.
And there you have it! You’ve made crawfish, probably hi-fived some people, probably told some exaggerated stories, and hopefully crushed it.