Crawfish Boil 101
I’ve lived in Louisiana all of my life. In all my time here, I’ve eaten a pretty decent share of crawfish. Now living in south Louisiana, I eat even more, but I’ve still never learned how to boil a pot on my own. That changed this week when I visited a friend of mine in Vermilion parish, Alan McLain, who is a crawfish, rice, and soybean farmer. He also happens to run his own crawfish catering business catering events from California to Washington D.C. This made him the best person to show me the ropes and help me boil my first pot, and it's much simpler than you may think. Let’s get to it.
Ingredients & Supplies
1 sack of crawfish - around 30-35 lbs
Baby red potatoes - 1-2 lbs
Corn on the cob - 6-12 mini ears
2 jars of Morton’s table salt (52 oz)
10 - 20 oz of cayenne pepper (to taste)
5-10 lemons, halved (to taste)
Ice chest
Vegetables First
Boil around 6 inches of water in a crawfish pot.
Once to a boil, add salt, add 4-8 oz of cayenne pepper, and juiced lemon halves to taste.
After seasoning is added, add the corn and potatoes.
Cook for 15-20 minutes. Looking for potatoes to be soft to touch.
Remove vegetables and store in an ice chest.
Crawfish Time
Add remaining lemons to taste.
Add more cayenne pepper. **Way more surface area of the crawfish (compared to veggies) will be in the pot so you’ll need plenty of seasoning to cover them well and absorb into the meat.
Bring water back to boil.
Add in your crawfish and make sure all are submerged in the seasoned water.
Cook for 15 minutes or until crawfish begin floating.
Remove crawfish and store in an ice chest.
Let steam for a couple of minutes in an ice chest.
Serve ‘em up!
