re: Your Crawfish boiling routine / Recent crap article

terrible process



we on the food board like to incorporate the microwave for all of our cooking needs.




rookie

Bet you I can eat crawfish faster than you (assuming they are not overcooked and mushy).

My crawfish must haves are:

1.) Clean crawfish, really clean, no salt, I think a clean crawfish absorbs seasoning more better...getting the silt and dirt out of the tail rings is replaced with seasoning.

2.) They are your crawfish, after you clean them cook them how you want.

3.) Thanks for the invite, I appreciate it. You could boil em till they are dusty, add ice, celery, oranges, a bag of lemons, pineapple, hot dogs, pasta, artichokes, bananas, animal crackers, vodka, beer, oil, butter, popcorn salt, ghost peppers, pepper mash, onions, garlic, or a volkswagon. Make em so goddamn salty and spicy no body enjoys em, It is just food, you get another shot at eating like 5 hours afterward, good or bad it aint gonna change anything

4.)

I'm responsible for the boiling of hundreds of thousands of pounds of crawfish every year. I can tell you with certainty that a boiled crawfish with a straight tail was not necessarily dead before the boil. I have seen them flipping their tails as they are dipped and some setting curled and some straight. Also when you have 35-60 pounds in a basket tails can be held straight.

Another factor to consider is that when sorting live crawfish you will notice that the ratio of curled tailed dead to straight tailed dead is probably around 3:1 if not more. That means the majority of your dead go in the basket with curled tails and come out with curled tails.

My process:

1. Bring water to a violent roll
2. Add seasoning (never add seasoning to pot before it is boiling, it can settle on the bottom and burn.)
3. Add crawfish
4. When the crawfish start to push up and all are a bright red they are done (do not bring back up to a rolling boil)
5. Cut fire, cool water and begin soak(no ice, this will dilute your pot and make consistency between batches almost impossible)
6. Soak for about 20 minutes and they're done.
7. Re-season between batches and change the water in the pot after every 3rd batch.

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4. When the crawfish start to push up and all are a bright red they are done (do not bring back up to a rolling boil)

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This is what I need work on. My burners have trouble getting the boil back up, and I think I end up leaving them in too long.

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So you take your perfectly seasoned water, and dilute it by 1.25 gallons (roughly 10 lbs. of ice)of pure water?

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Wait that was sarcasm. I guess I should've clarified haha.

No way would I dump a 10lb bag of ice in my boil water.

Also I can't believe no one has mentioned using a copper worm to cool the pot off.

Have a coiled copper worm with 2 hose threads on it, water hose goes in one side, exit hose attaches to other and you put it in a drain. Turn the water on and presto instant heat exchanger. Watch out that water discharging will be HOT.

You can also add in another smaller coil in a 5 gallon bucket and fill it with ice to drop the water temp even more.

Shut up man how the hell am I supposed to sell these things for $19.95 and make enough to retire if you're tellin everyone about it.

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No way would I dump a 10lb bag of ice in my boil water.

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That's how I saw the ice trick performed the first time, bad idea. The frozen bottle is a good idea though.