Crawfish

[Scoot]

My bro-in-law wants to catch and cook up a bunch of crawfish this coming weekend. 1) Anything I need to know in order to do this safely? 2) How do I do it?

Thanks,

[polarsusd81]

If you do a quick search you can find a lot of info about building simple crawfish traps. And as far as cooking them, lots of different ways to do it, but boiled is probably the easiest.

[Scoot]

Yep, I'm not worried about the catching part. I'm just worried about the preparing part- I just don't want anyone to get sick and I'd like it to be yummy!

[spudhauler]

Boil them, season the water first with old bay or any seafood seasonings you prefer, I think they sell some cajun spices especially for this purpose.

How and where do you catch them? I would really like to get a mess of them. Does anyone sell them?

[kingkobbla]

I think you can buy them at Cub.

[LABS4ME]

Don't you have to purge them first? I thought you did...

Good Luck!

Ken

[Ed Carlson]

Cooked and pealed Crayfish make a tasty addition to a cold mac salid.

I used to do up a batch up every season when I had a goldmine of a rearing pond handy to harvest them from. When they drained the pond to pull fingerlings, it would be ankle deep with Crawdads, skooped them up by the 5 gallon pail full and let them clean out in a wading pool of clean water for a couple of days....than get the boil on....YUM-YUM!

Most were boiled tell Red-ish, pealed and dip in garlic butter, and washed down with a cold one.

Dem's Vittles!!

The biggest word of caution is be sure you know if anyone is allergic to shellfish, crayfish will bring and allergic reaction to them, can be a bad deal!

[Wookiee]

Labs is right want you to purge them in cold water before cooking them.

[crawdad]

You can, with some salt added to them while they're sitting in clean water. That way you don't have to pull the 'vein' (lower intestine) out of the tail after twisting it off....it will have been purged of the material.

If not, just pull it off (after cooking)...similar to a raw shrimp if you've cleaned those.

[macgruber]

awww..... a lil crawdad [PoorWordUsage] never hurt anyone....

if you don't have enough for a straight up boil, throw them in a jambalaya with some chicken and sausage..... little more prep, but pretty easy once you cut up a few veggies-- just throw it in a pot and away you go..... most jambalayas have peeled crawdads, but you can leave them whole as well.....