Learned photobucket today and a bunch of crawfish

[jestmaty]

Learned how to work photobucket today.

Went to a crawfish boil on Sunday ( 4 days ago )

Ultimately, they boiled about 1800 lbs of crawfish, this photo is of about 200lbs. This was in the last hour of the boil.....

[Sportymonk]

Wow. Good shot. How do you like photobucket? Why did you go with it?

That's a lot of crawfish!

[bigdadi]

This looks like purging (cleaning) the crawfish with salt & water, draining before the cooking in big pots. Make sure you have lots of cold beers and layers of newspaper...
After purging, throw away the dead one before cooking. The dead ones will float, DO NOT add dead ones into the cooking pot.

Cook onion, lemon (half), suasage, potato, corn with crawfish boil seasoning 10 mins ahead before add-on the crawfish, then cook another 5 mins after water boiling again. Simple and Yummy, Yummy...

[jestmaty]

You're absolutely right.... purging of the crawfish. It cleans out the sand and sediment, cleans out the intestines of the bugs ( makes em' poop out their guts so they're cleaner to eat ). They also taste wonderful after being purged and cooked in an authentic crawfish boil concoction.

I'm only cooking 40 lbs tomorrow at home. Crawfish is about $2.50 per pound and I usually add about $30 worth of seasonings and corn and potatoes.


Someone steered me to photobucket and showed me how to upload, then copy/paste to some of the discussion forums that I regularly visit. It was much easier than trying to resize the photos manually. I guess that something just 'works' when I copy any size photo from photobucket to hp.org.

This was my first trial run at cooking crawfish. I've lived along Gulf Coast all of my life, been eating crawfish for probably 35 years, but only just started cooking 'em myself.

[Sportymonk]

OK I'll bite (pun intended) Why can't you leave the dead ones in? Won't they all be dead in a few minutes?

Also, what makes them "poop their guts out", the salt and fresh water? But weren't they in the water before they were caught?


Maybe you need to have a Honda Pilot meet to "educate us. Tim closed his credit card that I used for beer runs but I am sure we can find a way. Maybe Colorider will drop his wallet while riding that motorcycle of his!

[bigdadi]

The dead one - because you don't know how long they've been dead and how long they're rotten. Same theory of don't eat the unopen mussels after cooked. The difference is, before cooking you can tell which crawfish dead but in mussels you can't.

The salt is more salty thus can kill more germs and bateria during washing plus crawfish feels not the same saltiness they grow up, probably causing the excretion.

[jestmaty]

Eating a pre-dead-before-boiled crawfish can get you sick. The meat spoils quickly and all advice points out to try to remove the dead b4 boiling.

That isn't always possible, so when eating boiled crawfish, discard any of 'em that have discolored, mushy meat.... prolly dead b4 boiled...

Crawfish are a freshwater animal and I believe the intense concentration of salt they are soaked in minutes prior to boiling causes a natural "purging" of the innards of the crawfish. Their bodies just excrete all impurities naturally when submerged in salty/briny water.

Maybe another analogy is a human opening his/her eyes in a saltwater ocean. There is an intense stinging at first, then when your eyes are out of the salt water, they'll probably water and tear profusely to clean out the salt water...????.... Result? Newly washed eyes naturally via tear ducts.

[Sportymonk]

Thanks for the explanation. Glad you brought mussels in also. Had some frozen ones from the grocery store a while back and wondered why it said not to eat unopened ones. Did give them a few extra minutes cooking to give them a chance to open. Next time I think I will go strictly by the cooking time. (I did throw away those that didn't open.)

[jestmaty]

I knowthis looks very similiar to the pic above, but it is another crawfish boil about 2 weeks after the first boil...

Price dropped to about $1 per pound when bought by the sack.

Boiled 36 lbs today, only my wife and I ate em' and cleaned the rest to make an etouffee' or bisque later..

[OB3]

I have family down in N'Orleans and we have had many a crawfish boil both down there and up north here. Love them

[beer4799]

Originally posted by jestmaty
I knowthis looks very similiar to the pic above, but it is another crawfish boil about 2 weeks after the first boil...

Price dropped to about $1 per pound when bought by the sack.

Boiled 36 lbs today, only my wife and I ate em' and cleaned the rest to make an etouffee' or bisque later..

Lose that Bud Light and get some PBRs!

[RSQ Pilot]

Where are the Shiner Bocks and Blondes... much better with that mess o 'dads than that bud light...unless that's what you boiled them in and drank all the Shiners.

[Sportymonk]

Shiners and Bocks. Forgot about them, don't see them over here.

How about drop the buds and get either Coors Light (budget minded) or Killian's Irish Red and some Sierra Nevada Porter?

Been away for a while. Good to come back and see some good thread drift discussions. (Ok beer and crawfish are that big a drift.)

[Tim]

Nice!!.........

Time for a road trip to Katy TX.

[jestmaty]

Originally posted by RSQ Pilot
Where are the Shiner Bocks and Blondes... much better with that mess o 'dads than that bud light...unless that's what you boiled them in and drank all the Shiners.

Funny that you mention that....

I'll drink Shiner Bock and Hefeweizen all day long. Undeniably my favorite beer. If you keep an eye out, you can usually find a 12 pack of any Shiner for about $12 bucks. Much, much better than paying $9 for Bud, Lite, etc...

I've been sick with a cold for the last week and I have a diminished capacity of taste. ( No, not Swine flu! ) Can't see getting the good stuff until my smell and taste return.

Still experimenting with the boil recipe, but I have a good one as of now. Maybe I'll throw in 12 or 24 oz of beer into the next pot.

They were great by the way!!!!!!