Ok, this is from my buddy who grew up in Louisiana - scale as appropriate this recipe is based around 40# bags of Crawfish.
He recommends Zatarain's Pro Boil (spicy powder) & Zatarain's Shrimp & Crab Boil (liquid seafood flavoring) In the water over Tony Chacher's or Old Bay Dusted on top after you take them out and dump them on the table. Walmart may carry it, but you can probably find more appropriate sizes online.
Make a Salt Water solution:
- 5 gallons of H2O
- 1/2 canister of Morton's Iodized Salt
Purge in Salt Water for 10-15 minutes at most. It makes them sick and they 'puke' out any mud that still may be in their stomachs.
Don't keep them in there much longer, because they will die in about 17-20 minutes.
Only use live Crawfish for your boil.
This is huge, without this stage, they taste horrible!
If you plan on adding potatoes to your boil, pre-cook your potatoes about 3/4 of the way before adding them to the boil.
EXACTLY...add some corn-on-the-cob snapped in half too!
Get your water up to a strong rolling boil.
Add 1/2 Gallon of Zatarain's Shrimp & Crab Boil per 40# bag of Crawfish
Add 10-14oz. of Zatarain's Proboil per 40# bag of Crawfish
Have a metal basket inside the pot that you can pull the Crawfish out of ...
Add 1 40# bag of purged Crawfish
Add your potatoes & corn (optional)
Bring back up to a strong rolling boil and hold for 1-2 Minutes.
Cut the heat and let them steep in the hot water for 30-45 Minutes depending on how spicy you want them.
*Keeping the heat at a rolling boil will cause you to have rubbery Crawfish.
Take the Crawfish out with the Metal Basket.
Throw down the Crawfish & Fixins in the center of the table and have a party!! Gotta get butchers paper of long roll brown paper and tape it down to the table in layers, as it gets dirty and full of crawfish shells, pull off a layer with all the plates and stuff still on it!
If you are doing multiple bags of Crawfish, you will need to add additional Proboil and Shrimp & Crab Boil.
**KEEP the Crawfish stock for future use in Ettouffe, Creole and Gumbo! BINGO! If you don't have an immediate need, freeze it in mason jars!
Crawfish boils are more of an art than an exact science, so you'll have to figure out amounts of seasonings as you go. Just have more Crawfish boils to perfect the art.
Practice makes perfect. When I learned, I was trying to exact with everything, and my buddy would laugh and just say, "relax...if a little is good, a lot is better!"
...
Again, this if for a 40# bag of Crawfish. You'll need to scale this back accordingly for a 10# batch.
Hope this helps!
- Cory M.
I'm going to do it again soon.