Need Crawfish Seasoning Recipe.

Epicurean Exploits - Food and Recipes
1

Does anyone have a basic recipe for making the seasoning for the boil? (Cajun style recipe.)

It’s mostly salt, but also has Cayenne and? Garlic powder? Onion powder?

2

Tequila

Non-contact application

And remember,…crawfish are nocturnal, and I wish you the best of luck.

3

Baited 3 traps with herring kast night before I went to bed. At light I’ll go pull in dinner?

4

Make sure you have a massive pot to cook them in…something on the order of 20 quarts or better. Fill half way with water.

What we have used in the past:
Salt–Enough to make your water taste salty
Cayenne Pepper
Black Pepper
Garlic–Whole Heads, cut in half
Sweet Yellow Onions—Quartered. Use Vidalia, TX 1015, Peruvian, Hawaiian, etc
Lemon—Whole, quartered
Whole Yellow Mustard Seeds

Boil everything in pot for 20 to 30 minutes to get flavors to meld.

You might think about purging your crawdaddies before cooking…put them in H20 with some cayenne and cornmeal.

5

Sounds good, I’ll do that.

Traps were full. (3 crab traps.) They are all about 4-5 inches long with tails that look to be 2-3 bites worth of meat.

T-Bone, Loring and a few other riff raff are coming over for dinner tonight.

6

I rinsed them 3 times with springwater and got them very clean, then put them in the refrigerator. Will purge them before boiling them tonight. These look more like lobsters than the ones I have eaten in New Orleans. They are huge.

7

Great photo of those Craw-Daddy’s! Can’t wait. Hear Whetstone may make a guest appearance after his Grape Radio interview. Should be a fun evening. I gotz da good tequia.

8

Save yourself some time and use any of these:

http://shop.zatarains.com/default.php?categories_id=1390

9

Where’s the fun in that?

The Carg is a man of action. I feel like he wants to be involved.

10

T-Bone, Whetstone is the surprise Berserker yer bringin? Cool! I hope he can handle Margaritas as appetizers!!!

No time to order the boil seasoning, gotta make it.

The tip about a 30 minute boil to let flavors diffuse and meld before adding crawfish sounds like a really good tip.

11

Leaves more time for rebel rousin’, drinkin’ and carrying on…

This recipe sounds pretty good:

http://www.gumbopages.com/food/seafood/crab-boil.html

12

Crawfish were awesome! I can still smell them on my hands today. It was even more fun repelling down the side of a cliff later that night after a bottle of tequila in pitch black trying to find the traps in the river. I think all we found were trees and bushes on the way down. Whetstone was smart to stay up top. Loring was even smarter to leave early!


Too much fun without having to get airlifted out, that’s for sure. Let’s do it again!

13

T-Bone, I think Whetstone and Loring were smarter than us… Margaritas, wine, tequila, straight absinthe, cuban rum, rye whiskey, and a Soweto toilet does not lead to good decisions at 1 a.m. That was reckless, but fun as hell! Holy shite, you’ve got balls to follow me rappeling down a cliff in the dark. [suicide.gif] Whetstone was the smart one in that situation. The other crab traps, that we did not check, are tied to a windmill tower washed from somewhere upstream and half buried in the bank and half over the water. If we had tried to check those in the dark it would not have been pretty… In the daytime its sketchy walking across the iron rails suspended above the water.

I am about to head down and empty the traps. I had dinner last night with Philip Ente and French wine critic David Rayer. If anyone gets an offer to eat at Philip’s house jump on it. He is a nuerosurgeon that happens to be a classicly trained chef…! I don’t think he has posted here yet, but posts on the other board sometimes. Philip says the shells can be used to make great sauce. (He is going to trade me wine for cooking lessons.) This afternoon I plan on making crawfish bisque.

14

These are bigger than the last ones. Theres’s one that’s 6 inches long! There were a bunch of juveniles, eating size by most standards(?) but I released everything under 3 inches long. I have not seen a mythical blue crawfish yet. If you catch a blue one the Cajuns say you gotta let 'em go for good luck. About 4-5 pounds total. I’m gonna boil them, take the tail meat out and put it aside. Then use the shells to make a bisque. I’ll cut the tails into pieces and add them to the bisque when its done. I’m gonna make ciabatta bread this afternoon while the bisque simmers. I pulled the traps and hung them in the poison oak thickets where they’ll be safe. I’ll let the population redistribute and hit them again next weekend for Jambalaya. flirtysmile

15

The six incher was almost 8.5 inches from tip of tail to tip of claws. Sta. Rita Hills freshwater lobsters!

I’m cheating all the way. The shells and bodies are simmering to make stock for the bisque in 3 quarts of no msg low sodium vegetable stock with a quarter cup olive oil, 10 bay leaves, a handful of fresh wild thyme originally from the hills of Liguria, a sliced up sweet onion.

I crushed the claws and arms to make their meat and juice available for the stock. The larger claws had nice meat and I put it with the tails to add to the bisque at the end.

The recipe I started with is Cajun, but I’m gonna tweak it (alot) and go more mutant Milanese/Genoese direction? Leave the tomato, onion, garlic, green bell pepper, green onion tops, sour cream and cayenne out of the roux.

I’m going to make the roux (50/50 butter and flour,) with shallots instead of onion, and a nice bright sweet red bell pepper, celery, parsley, a little more thyme(?) and a knife tip of saffron. That’s what I’m thinking? Time to make the roux and create this thing.

16

That’s raddichio! What time shall I come over tomorrow to check the stock?

Good thinkin’ on the low sodium broth. Always find that over-salted crawdaddy’s just don’t make me want to eat more than I should…and I should eatz-alot of dem puppies!

Nice work, Carg. Sta. Rita Hills Crawfish…who’da thunk!?!

17

You sure that’s crawfish?? [wink.gif]

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I wish I had an audio recording of you two down there in the dark by the river. I was in stitches for a half hour straight. All I kept hearing was a lot of snapping branches down below in the dark followed by Pete’s voice saying things like ‘be careful T! You’ll fall into the river!’ and ‘You alright?’. I was afraid I was going to have to go for help to get you guys out of there. A fine evening gentlemen.
[drinkers.gif]

19

Well, we did drink with the Green Fairy (according to Carg), so that might explain the next morning waking up naked in a pasture surrounded by gopher carcasses and a cow skull on my head. Nice touch slipping a copy of Lord of the Flies under my arm too…nice touch.