Need Crawdad cooking instructions

[7br]

Hey all of you Cajuns, I need some help. Last night was our Cub Scout Fishing derby at the mud hole that passes as a pond in the town park. Biggest fish caught was a four inch bluegill. However, the kids did manage to catch about 3/4 gallon of crawdads about five inches long. My kids want to eat them and I am game. (SWMBO said she might have a previous engagment.)

What is the proper way to prepare crawdads?

[Scrounger]

Hey all of you Cajuns, I need some help. Last night was our Cub Scout Fishing derby at the mud hole that passes as a pond in the town park. Biggest fish caught was a four inch bluegill. However, the kids did manage to catch about 3/4 gallon of crawdads about five inches long. My kids want to eat them and I am game. (SWMBO said she might have a previous engagment.)

What is the proper way to prepare crawdads?

Never ate one but they look like shrimp to me... I would think your favorite shrimp receipe would work well.

[JSH]

Mark, if ya can get well water all the better for this. Main thing for around here, put some salt in the water and dump them all in there for a bit. This will make them purge any mud in there system.
I would say then just to treat them as shrimp boil for now. If ya get them much hotter with the cayanne most folks, around here, will not eat them. Also DO NOT over cook them, or ya will have mush.
Ya might do a google search and come up with a lot more. I just saw my friends from NO this past Sunday. They were leaving at 7AM today to go back down for a while and see what they can salvage.

Jeff

[woody1]

No Cajun here but all we ever did was dump live into boiling water. Cook for about 10 minutes after water returned to boil. Cool and crack. Regards, Woody

[7br]

Crawdads are done et. Shoulda put the old aquarium aerator in the tank as only about a third of them survived. Got some crab boil from the seafood counter at our local WalMart. Also got a salmon steak and some Zartain's Red bean and Rice mix. All in all, a pretty decent meal. SWMBO even ate a little crawdad.

[Frank46]

You forgot to put in some cut up potatoe chunks and pieces of corn cob cut up in 2" pieces. Boil the whole mess together. Dump on table covered w/newspapers and eat.
My wife loves 'em but I don't Frank

[C1PNR]

You forgot to put in some cut up potatoe chunks and pieces of corn cob cut up in 2" pieces. Boil the whole mess together. Dump on table covered w/newspapers and eat.
My wife loves 'em but I don't Frank

Only way I can improve on this advice is to suggest you use the newspaper to line the bottom of a 4 six pack flat, you know, the one that 4 six packs of beer comes in with sides that come up about 3" or so. Then dump it all in there.

Start eating at one end and dump the carcasses in the end where you started. You can eat your way from one end to the other and leave nothing but shells and cobs in the box. Easy to clean up, too, when you're done.

This is as taught to me in the early afternoon of a bright Spring day in one of the "darker" sections of Chicago. Cold beer on the side is, of course, a requirement!

[Jetwrench]

To go with what Frank46 said I would add the best smoked sausage I could find cut to about 2" and large sweet onions cut into quarters, plus fresh mushrooms, the little button ones are the best. C1PNR if you dont drink beer with them the way we cook them you will be sweating buckshot one minute an spontaneously combust the next. I could eat them every day. 7br We buy them by the 50 pound sacks, and yes you would want to purge them with salt water. Also if after you cook them the tail is straight DONT eat them, straight tail = dead before cooking curled tail = alive at cooking, question is how long were they dead, DONT EAT THE STRAIGHT TAILS. I know this is late in coming but you will know the next time. Jetwrench

[btr-cj]

FYI

Do not store crawfish in water as you found out, they will drown.

Ideally crawfish are put into plastic sacks for transport and storage. They tie the sacks tight so they cannot attack each other. Keep them cool and they will stay alive for a couple days or two. You can store them in anything you have for short periods just keep them cool. Sprinkle water on them from time to time to cool them if you do not have refrigeration.

When I buy crawfish I usually boil them the same day. If I will boil them the next day, I will put them in a refrigerator I have outside in my garage.

C.J.