By Carmen Juch
Crayfish. Crawfish. Crawdad. Whatever you want to call them, there are over 500 species of these little crustaceans, a relative of the lobster. Drooling enthusiasts from Louisiana to Oregon to New Jersey and points in between eagerly await the "season" each year.
When I was young and living in Louisiana, every gas station or corner store would sell lunch-sized paper bags full for a dollar – a heck of a profit considering the owner and their entire family would harvest the shrimp-like critters from the bayous along the back roads so there was only an investment of time and some spices and the bag of course. A favorite pastime was grossing out the tourist by sucking the heads. We would laugh at the look on their faces as they turned away to discuss this act with their traveling companions, sure that we were indeed backwards in some way. Those days are long gone. Now, everyone knows what these little beauties are and vie for their fair share when that time of year arrives.
Here in the Texas/Louisiana area we call them crawfish, and they are found in more places than most of us even realize. There are festivals celebrating the consuming of the little devils all the way to New Zealand.
Think "crawfish festival" and a lot of us in this part of the woods think "Breaux Bridge, Louisiana".
But guess again — since 1951, (that's right 55 years!) there has been the annual Tualatin Crawfish Festival, "The Nation's Oldest Crawfish Festival", in Tualatin, Oregon. In 1961 Tennessee Ernie Ford declared the Tualatin Crawfish Festival "the only crawfish festival in the world". Fifteen years later the city of Breaux Bridge got wind of the claim and fought back sending Tualatin a letter informing them that in 1960 the Louisiana State legislature declared Breaux Bridge the Crawfish Capital of the World. A Louisiana Voodoo Queen even got involved and placed a curse on the Tualatin Festival threatening them with bad "gris-gris" for trying to steal Louisiana's claim to crawfish superiority.
I guess the gris-gris must have worked because the following year a near riot broke out following the Tualatin Festival and reinforcements had to be called in (you don't mess with those Voodoo Queens) and the future of the Tualatin event hung in jeopardy for a while. The local businesses decided to keep on and 29 years later the event is still going strong.
Most crawfish live in freshwater like lakes and streams, but a few varieties survive in salt water. If it makes you feel any better as you suck them down, crawfish live normally less than two years.
While it may be easier to frequent your area restaurants that know how to prepare crawfish with just the right mix of spices, if you are adventurous, don't mind the work that it entails (no pun intended) and are ready to astound friends and family with your own crawfish boil you need to start with the right paraphernalia. Stock up on newspaper. You can use it to cover the table with numerous layers so that as they get wet and full of shells, they can be peeled up a few pages at a time and tossed. Tons of paper napkins should be in easy reach of the eaters. It's much easier if you use napkins and not paper towels and you will figure out why the first time you use your "gunked up" hands to try and tear off a paper towel from the roll. Be sure to have plenty of large garbage containers nearby also. It's really not necessary to have plates if you do it this way. Just pour them in the middle of the table.
You'll need a 15- to 20-gallon pot with a lid to boil the crawfish in, a metal basket to fit the pot that has holes to drain the water out, along with a propane burner to cook on. Next figure out how much live crawfish you need to buy. Most people I know can eat at least 6 to 10 pounds of crawfish each – actually most of us eat more! (Remember, you are only eating the tail meat and it takes about 4 pounds of crawfish to equal 1 pound of meat.)
An hour or two before you're ready to cook find a shady spot and set up your crawfish cooker hopefully near a water hose. A very important step is to purge the crawfish but remember, don't leave the crawfish covered with water, as they need air to stay alive. To purge the crawfish you have options. Pour rock salt into the cooker and fill with water and swish to dissolve the salt. Pour the crawfish out of the sack into the metal basket and dip the basket in and out of cool water, changing the water several times until the crawfish are clean. You might want to use a large tub of water or one or two large ice chests but remember the crawfish need to breathe! Use gloves (since those pinchers really hurt) and discard any dead crawfish and debris. Keep the crawfish in a shaded area until you're ready to Get Cookin’!
When you're ready, add the water and seasoning to the pot and bring it to a boil on the propane burner. Let's stop here to talk about spices for a minute. The easiest way to go about this is the pre-made versions like Zatarain’s® or Tony Chachere’s®. Personally I use a mixture of the liquid and the spice bag then in addition I add whole cloves, whole garlic pods, lemons sliced in half, pepper pods and a half cup vinegar per sack of crawfish. Some people add salt: I think the spice bags have enough. A friend of mine in New Orleans would add one bottle of Louisiana hot sauce in the boil water instead of the vinegar: everyone likes to have his or her own "special sauce". I like to dip the meat into the hot sauce and therefore I do not use it in the boil. When it comes to crawfish, to each his own, I say!
Once the spices are dissolved, you can add the potatoes and corn and cook until about half done. Some folks like to add onions, mushrooms, or other veggies, I don't care for them as I think the onions just get overspiced and slimy and the mushrooms absorb too much of the salt that you need for the crawdads, but you should do what you like (see last sentence in above paragraph!) We used to cook artichokes in the leftover water and then stuff them with bread dressing the next day. As veggies become done remove them from the pot and place in a small clean ice chest and cover with foil. Don't close the lid, the foil will keep the heat in and prevent weeping.
Time to add the crawfish when the veggies are halfway there. Add the crawfish and bring the water back to a boil. It takes from three to five minutes according to the size but the bright red-orange tells you they are getting close (remember, like shrimp, crawfish do not take that long to cook and if you overcook they will be tough, mealy and hard to peel) remove a couple of crawfish from the pot, peel them, and check for doneness. (I find that the first batch is never as good as the ones to follow.)
Now for the good part, eating crawfish!
Step 1 Gently twist the head apart from the tail and if you are like me, then at this point, gently suck the head, or insert a finger into the cavity and scoop out the "fat".
Step 2 Hold the tail sideways between your thumb and forefinger and squeeze gently to break the shell. Then peel away 2 to 3 segments of shell from the tail to expose the meat.
Step 3 Pinch the bottom end of the tail while carefully pulling the meat out of the shell. If the pinchers are a decent size you can break them open and eat the little morsel there.
Step 4 Repeat until stuffed!