Recipe Live Crawfish to eat and to freeze.

[rascal]

Too tired to mess with pictures last night. So here they are. Something I have never run into before, they were purged before shipment as when I went to purge them the water ran clear on the first rinse.

Fresh out of the pot with steam rising in the cooler.
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Clearer view.
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The vege. I only had one stick of andouille left.
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Dinner plate!
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When we are done eating, we normally separate the heads from the tails, divide the tails into 1 pound packages and freeze the packages for picking when we go to use the tail meat. This time we picked all the tail meat and will divide, vacuum seal and freeze today. After I clean up and put away my cooking equipment, I'll be making a trip to Restaurant Depot to get some boneless pork butt to prep for Tasso and Andouille making next weekend.

Looks exactly like I thought it would

Russ

 

[ElizabethB]

Okay ElizabethB , I saved several tablespoons of fat, though Craig didn't. Please post your recipe for etouffee that uses it (or at least give me an idea since you probably don't use a recipe) because the way I make it doesn't use the fat.

Craig has other pictures to post, but this was one of the biggest ones, and there were quite a few around its size. A few small ones, but the giant ones far outnumbered the smaller ones. Was actually able to get a good bit of claw meat, as well as tail meat. Keep in mind its tail was arced up and not flat, so it was actually closer to 7.5 to 7.75 pushed flat.

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Those are extra large. How were they to peel? That size can have very hard shells. Glad you kept some of the fat. G won't scoop the fat. His fingers are too big and he gets to aggressive - scooping out more than just the fat. He leaves the heads on the side for me to scoop.
Just a note to community members not familiar with crawfish. Bigger is not always better. the yield of meat per pound is less with big crawfish than with medium crawfish.
I feel for the crawfish farmers this year. They had a bumper crop but little demand. With restaurants closed or doing only take out the commercial side of their business has been negligible. I have heard that live crawfish have been selling for $15 per sack (30-35 lbs. not graded) Boiled crawfish are selling for $1.99 per lb. or less. Even in a bumper crop year these prices are unheard of.
I will post a semblance of a recipe using crawfish fat - tomorrow. After spending 4 hours doing a driver's ed course and making banana pudding I decided to have some wine.

 

[rascal]

Those are extra large. How were they to peel? That size can have very hard shells. Glad you kept some of the fat. G won't scoop the fat. His fingers are too big and he gets to aggressive - scooping out more than just the fat. He leaves the heads on the side for me to scoop.
Just a note to community members not familiar with crawfish. Bigger is not always better. the yield of meat per pound is less with big crawfish than with medium crawfish.
I feel for the crawfish farmers this year. They had a bumper crop but little demand. With restaurants closed or doing only take out the commercial side of their business has been negligible. I have heard that live crawfish have been selling for $15 per sack (30-35 lbs. not graded) Boiled crawfish are selling for $1.99 per lb. or less. Even in a bumper crop year these prices are unheard of.
I will post a semblance of a recipe using crawfish fat - tomorrow. After spending 4 hours doing a driver's ed course and making banana pudding I decided to have some wine.

Hic.

Russ

 

[medtran49]

They were quite easy to peel actually. Craig did a perfect job of cooking them. On most of them, they vein pulled right out when we pinched and pulled. Craig's fingers are probably too big as well. I used my little finger tip and it made a perfect scoop. The place only sells extra large and jumbo. We got extra large. Some of the shells were a bit heavy, but since the claws were so big, we got a good bit of claw meat. That pulled right out too for the most part, and, if it didn't, was easy to fish out with a claw tip.

 

[ElizabethB]

When the vein pulls out with the shell and the claw meat pops out in one piece they are perfectly done. Good job Craig.
Recipe - Crawfish Etouffee
If you compare the Etouffee recipe to my Brother's crawfish pie recipe you will see that it is very similar. When Ron first started making crawfish pie he used Etouffee with the rice asa his filling. He has since refined his recipe for the pie..