Bill Ellzey: I'm looking for your answers to these questions about crawfish
No longer driven by Lenten rules requiring “meatless” Fridays, we bought a “10-pound special” of boild crawfish last Friday anyway just to enjoy more of the tasty critters.
It turned out to be a mistake. We were handed a big bag that held the 10 pounds of mudbugs, four short ears of corn and two pounds of potatoes. There was too little spicy seasoning in the crawfish, and they were seriously overcooked. We will be more careful next time and probably patronize a different vendor.
Been there, done that: Years ago, we bought a batch of boiled crawfish from a vendor whose recipe and cooking style we had enjoyed many times. That time, we intended to drive to the family home near Robeline and share the crustaceans with the gang there. A small sample from the freshly boiled “bugs” in the ice chest was perfect.
5 things to do this weekend: All-you-can-eat seafood, a benefit run and a major food drive
We closed the chest and headed north. Some five hours later we delivered the crawfish to our waiting relatives. They were warm and still spicy but seriously overcooked. The residual heat inside the closed, insulated chest had continued cooking and left them edible but no longer tasty.
Different problem. We had arrived at last week's vendor at the appointed time but had to wait a while for the boiling to finish. Our 10 pounds was taken out right away, and we hurried home to eat them. There was no insulated chest, no time for residual cooking, and yet the crawfish were seriously overdone.
Removing the tail meat from the shell in one piece was difficult to impossible. The tail meat crumbled and the fat was a discolored blob.
Explanation: The cook had miss-timed the cooking and left them in the boiling water too long, OR, the pot had taken too long to reach the full boil that is used as the starting point for timing. Near boiling may have lasted too long, even before the timing began.
Wanted: recommendations for sources of boiled crawfish that have longstanding reputations for tasty, well-cooked feasts. Call or write.
Another boiler? We have no children and both our mothers have passed, so we spent Mother's Day with our post-Ida hosts and their children. One, after enjoying the day with his in-laws, brought over the leftovers from a crab boil. Somehow those crabs were more thoroughly salted and seasoned than I usually expect.
Maybe it was because the crabs were not “fat” or “full,” with space inside the shell for the salty, peppery water to penetrate the meat inside the shell.
Maybe the unnamed cook had a special trick in the boiling. Tasty, but I missed those crab lumps the seasoning typically doesn't penetrate and therefore have a sweetish flavor.
Anyhow: Crawfish season is not over. In the old days, the faculties at local high schools held crawfish boils to mark the end of the complicated, tiring, end-of-year testing, grading and graduation process. A crew would boil several sacks of crawfish to feed some two dozen teachers and their spouses. Then, school was out for a few weeks.
So-called wild “spillway” crawfish now have strong competition from farmed crawfish. Over time, rice farmers figured out ways to incorporate crawfish into their fields, and to extend the time crawfish are available. There seems to be a science to it.
Share! How do you do the boiled crawfish-crab thing? Are there tricks most folks miss?
Responding? Contact Bill Ellzey at (985) 381-6256, ellzey@viscom.net, billellzey312@gmail.com or Bill Ellzey, 312 Bellaire Drive, Houma, LA 70360.
This article originally appeared on The Courier: Bill Ellzey: Any advice on where to find good crawfish? Get in touch.
