My friend Tammy is a sweet Southern belle from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She went home for her little sister’s graduation and brought back some of her dad’s Crawfish Boil, which was amazing! Everything about it exceeded my expectations of crawfish. (You may remember when we made Crawfish Gumbo. We had a hard time finding crawfish here and what we ended up with wasn’t the best, I guess).
Each crawfish was 2 to 3 times the size of anything I had previously seen. The taste and texture of the meat was also completely different, freshness times 5. The crawfish butter/tomalley was creamy and luxurious. The flavors were so harmonious, the spice, the brininess, and I swear I could taste the love. Every piece looked beautiful. The crazy thing is, Tammy’s dad froze it and just sent her on the plane with 25+ lbs of crawfish boil and it remained frozen till she got home, where she put it in her freezer. We re-boiled it here and it was sheer perfection. I think it’s time for Daddy Dang to start a Crawfish Boil shipping company! But until then, he has shared his recipe…
Do you see this bowl? It’s about 13″ in diameter and more than 5″ high. We (7 people) ate about 4 bowls full and still weren’t finished.
Daddy Dang’s Crawfish Boil Recipe
Ingredients
- 3.5 gallons Water
- 3.5 pounds “Louisiana” crawfish seasoning **DO NOT ADD EXTRA SALT**, for every 2nd sack of crawfish that you boil, only add an additional 1/2 bag of seasoning
- 1/3 Bottle of “Louisiana” Cayenne Pepper
- 10 Lemons, sliced
- 15 cloves of Garlic, halved
- 5 Oranges, sliced
- 1 Celery Stalk, sliced
- 4 Onions, sliced vertically into 6 pieces
- Whole White Mushrooms (optional)
- 1 sack of Live Crawfish (approx. 35-40lbs)
Instructions
1. Bring water to boil and add everything into boil and cook for 15 minutes (covered).
2. Turn off heat, take lid off. Add a whole bag of ice into the pot!!! (this will allow the cooking process to stop and will trap the flavors in each crawfish)
3. Let stand with ice for 10-12 minutes.
Ready to eat afterward (ice will have melted into the pot)
For more pics from our Crawfish Boil Party, go to Flickr.
Coming soon! Tammy’s demo on how to eat crawfish.
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You can’t go wrong with a good ol’ crawfish boil!
great site! =>
Delicious! This looks so good.
I’d love to know how these were frozen. Vacuum sealed w/o water? In water? I really miss boils now that I live in No. Cali. I was back home in Houston 1 month ago & had myself a 25 lb boil with my brother. I put the few remaining tails in the boil water and froze them in containers but didn’t have enough room to haul back on the plane. I’m always bringing back pre-frozen LA tails (and boudin!) for etouffee but they just don’t taste as good as fresh. Heck, I even bring back Holmes pork sausage & blue Gulf crabs ’cause seafood gumbo requires the best ingredients! Never heard about the ice trick. Know plenty of people who keep a cooler for boils to keep the excess hot and spicy.
Hi Chanel, we actually let the crawfish cool to room temperature then simply bagged them in regular shopping plastic bags and placed the entire bag in the freezer over-night. For the airport, we put the frozen bag inside a larger garbage bag, inside a styrofoam box, inside a cardboard box. No dry ice or vacuum sealed bags were used. My flight was a quick 2.5 hours and as soon as I got home, I transferred the (still) frozen bag of mud bugs quickly to my freezer. Hope this helps!
Tammy, I appreciate your response. Can’t wait to recreate the good old days of LA & TX boils out here in Cali.