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The Enticingly Spicy Crawfish |
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Written by Thomas Zew
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Wednesday, 23 April 2008 |
Crawfish season is in high gear and there’s nothing like sitting on the front porch popping down a few of these delightful crustaceans with your favorite cold beverage. What is it with these little critters that can make a person eat 5 to 10 lbs worth in one sitting?
I’ve eaten probably over hundreds of pounds of crawfish in my life span and for me it’s the spicy tasty flavoring that gets me addicted. For those who don’t suck the heads of these critters, I recommend giving it a try because it’s in the cavity of the crawfish head that you will experience the dancing flavors of cayenne pepper, salt, lemon, crab boil and the crawfish juice all concentrated in the crawfish’s own fat.
The crawfish has to be done right to make for a lasting social event. Not only does the crawfish have to have the right combination of flavoring but it must also be cooked perfectly to make for easy assessment to the tail meat. A true test is after breaking the head off, peel the first roll of shell from the top of the tail. Then pinch the meat out by squeezing from bottom of the tail. If it comes out easily, then the crawfish is perfectly cooked. Also, when pinching the meat out, the crawfish’s intestine can be easily removed as well. Once you master this technique, it makes eating these critters a lot more enjoyable.
Now for those who cringe at the thought of sucking the heads of the crawfish, I’ve come up with a way to make it more enticing. I call it the ‘crawfish shot’. This works best when the crawfish is still hot. After breaking the head off, hold it upright and fill the head with cold beer. Then draw your mouth to the head and squeeze the head while you dunk down the beer inside. The cold beer helps tame down the hot spice and in turn allows you to experience all the flavors that is held in the head.
One other part of the crawfish you might want to venture is the crawfish brain. It’s located in the deepest part of the head right behind the crawfish’s eyes. The brain is dark seaweed-green in color with a wet sandy texture. Once you isolate the brain from rest of the cavities, suck the pouch encasing the brain. The taste of the brain can be described as bitter mustard like. It’s a nice contrast of flavor. I use it to clean my palette of the salt and spices so that I can eat more of these addictive crustaceans.
So go out to your favorite local seafood market in Mobile and pick up some spicy crawfish and experience the different flavors these critters have to offer. MudBugs on Dauphin Island Parkway is locally know for their spicy cooked crawfish as well as R&R Seafood on the Battleship Parkway (or the ‘causeway’ as it is locally referred to). There is also Springhill Seafood on Springhill Ave that cooks crawfish to match both MudBugs and R&R.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 01 May 2008 )
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Food Column 
Man there is nothing like Crawfish and a cold one. Great breakdown of this