A Little Nebraska Louisiana Crawfish Boil...

Several weeks ago Travis called me and said he wanted to have a Louisiana Crawfish Boil. Neither of us had done one so he went online and found a place to order live crawfish from. We had no idea how many to order for 12 people so we got 20 pounds, in hindsight, 10 pounds would have been plenty. I did some research on what to put in the boil and then prepped some little red potatoes, corn on the cob, onions, sausage, and lemons.

Our order was shipped out Thursday, August 11 in the evening and it arrived at our house on Friday, August 12 in the afternoon. I obeyed the instructions and opened the cooler and inspected and washed the crawfish but left them in the bag until we were ready to use them. Let me just say the smell was making me reconsider the decision to try eating them... But washing the mud out helped with the smell tremendously. Washed three more times...waited until it was time to cook them before opening the bag.

The company includes their own seasoning packets for the crawfish. That certainly helped.

The turkey fryer I borrowed didn't have a basket so I got very redneck and created one out of some chicken wire we had in the shed. 

I must say it worked perfectly! I did have to fold it down again so I could get a lid on the pot for steaming purposes.

After letting the water and seasonings come to a boil we added the pearl onions and potatoes. When those were about 4 minutes from done we added the corn and the sausage. After 4 minutes we lifted the basket out and poured the veggies and sausage into a clean cooler to steam and stay warm. 

Trey took this picture of me lifting the basket out to show my steamy glasses but it didn't show.

Veggies in the cooler....waiting for the rest to get here. 

When Bobbi and Travis got here we dumped the crawfish out of the bag and into their styrofoam cooler. From there we sorted them into smaller wire baskets for a last rinse and to remove any dead ones. 

The guys started sorting and Poppy just said "EWWWWWW" over and over. Bobbi and Travis brought some friends out for the festivities. 

Trey was not shooting crawfish, he had been shooting at a target and came to see the "mud bugs"

I left Travis, Seth and Matt to sort and Bobbi to rinse. I went to start cooking the first batch.

I had taken the crawfish in an aluminum pan to put them in the pot. I set the pan down and all of a sudden they were escaping! This guy did not want to be recaptured!! 

But into the boil they went! 

After they steamed in the cooler for a bit we dumped out the first batch with the veggies.

I let Travis have the honors since it was his party idea.

I had made some cookies to look like the crawfish boil ingredients. So of course we had to take a picture of them with it.

Time to eat. We kept cooking and eating and still at the end we had so many left over.

Such a pile of crawfish!

After everyone was done eating, Ashley and Bobbi's friend, Jamie, spent about an hour getting the meat out of the last ones. Each one yields about a 1 and 1/2 inch piece of meat. The fish certainly had a good meal with all our heads and tails.

I would never say that they would be my meat of choice but it was so much fun to sit outside around that table laughing and talking and just being together. I would do it again. Maybe with shrimp...