Crawfish

So the longer I’m away from my home state of Mississippi the more I am beginning to realize some of the vast differences even within the southern region.  Last weekend my uncle had a crawfish boil!  One of my absolute favorite things about spring time!!  Crawfish season is HUGE in Louisiana and MS…it runs from March til about June.  I will say, they aren’t quite as fun when you are pregnant and can’t enjoy a nice, cold adult beverage with your crawfish, but I still survived!

So in talking to a lot of my friends here in Atlanta many of them have never even had crawfish, this blew me away.  Not eating crawfish is like being from the south and never eaten grits.  It just baffles me!!  And not only that I’ve also gotten a lot of “ewww, yuck”!!  Clearly they haven’t been to some of the crawfish boils that I’ve been too!  So I was curious to see how things were going to go.  It was interesting!

Rule #1-when preparing your crawfish you hose them down to get all the dirt off, they’re not called mudbugs for nothing!  This can be as simple as throwing them all on in a cooler with the drain open, turning on a hose and spraying them down til the water runs clear.  There is no need to use 3-4 different containers/coolers to “dunk” them in water to clean them off…half way through it you’re just going to end up with dirty water that you are trying to clean the rest of the crawfish with.  Oh and be sure to take out any dead crawfish you do NOT want these in your pot!

Rule #2- You must, must, must have corn & potatoes, along with your crawfish.  Don’t ever serve just crawfish, that’s just rude!

Rule #3- You eat crawfish with your hands, don’t ever ask for utensils or you will be laughed at!!  And you’ll really be laughed at if you “clean” the crawfish meat before you eat it.  The “goo” that comes out is NOT going to hurt you!  I can assure you not every shrimp you’ve ever eaten has been deveined either!

Now here is where things got interesting last weekend!  Things were going good, the crawfish was out on the table ready to eat, so I dove in!  You don’t have to ask me twice to start eating!!   So as I start to eat the crawfish the only way I know how…the only way I’ve ever seen, I look around at everyone else, including my husband, God love him, and I see everyone shelling the crab as if it were a lobster or something and then “cleaning” off the meat before eating it!??!  I said “what on earth are y’all doing”???  Completely baffled by this I sat and watched them spend 5 minutes on one crawfish.  I would be down 5, while they were still working on one!!  So I had to give crawfish eating lessons to my ENTIRE family!!! 

In case you’re wondering here ya go…

First, break off the head and discard it. A true Cajun will suck the heads at this point!! 

After you break the head off, place your thumb on the “ejection button” near the tail of the crawfish on the underside and mash firmly to break the meat loose.

With the shell still partially intact, bring the tail meat to your mouth and sink your teeth into the exposed meat.

Chomp down on it, and it will pop into your mouth as you leave the tail behind.

Very Important--**When eating crawfish, there's no need to remove the peel from the tail. While you are laboring over the shell, your Cajun friends will eat five times as many crawfish as you do.

So here’s to happy crawfish boiling for the rest of the season!!  This also got me thinking of some other “southern things” that Jarrod and I often discuss, I may just have to write about those later!