Crawdads
 

So I'm thinking of trying to catch some crawdads at Strawberry. Any tips on how to prepare? Cleaning, boiling, recipes, etc.

If you have running water in your RV, to clean them you need to put the live crawdads in a bucket and start running cold water over them. When the bucket is about half full or so, dump some salt into it and fill the bucket with water. Let it sit for about 10 minutes or so and the crawdads will purge themselves. Clean out the garbage in the bucket then repeat the entire process. 2 or 3 times usually works to purge them completely.

To cook them, it's pretty much like boiling lobsters. Add salt, any other seasoning you want (my dad likes bay leaves), some washed red potatoes (not peeled) and a few cans of corn to the water and bring it to a rolling boil, then dump the crawdads into the water and when the water starts boiling again, let them cook for about 12 minutes or until they are bright red. Drain the crawdads, taters and corn and enjoy. It just like eating a lobster too. Just crack it open and eat the meat. If you didn't get enough to eat, cook more.

Make sure the crawdads are alive when you start to cook them because they are poisonous if they're dead when you cook them. You'll get really sick. So keep a look out as you are purging the crawdads. If they have a strait tail or aren't moving, get rid of it.

One last thing, be sure to cook about 12-15 pounds of them at a time. Otherwise, there really won't be enough to eat.

Purge is a very nice way to put it.

Yes it is. Kids appreciate yak, ralph, puke, etc., but the wife doesn't.

You better have plenty of immodium on hand after eating them.

And that's not an exaggeration.

We have been going to Strawberry for years catching crawdads. It's an annual family tradition and our kids really look forward to it. We use chicken legs tied onto a string. We caught about 700 this year in 2-3 hours.

As we catch the crawdads, we drop them in five-gallon buckets of water to keep them alive. Then we "process" them before we leave the lake. It is illegal to transport live crawdads in Utah. We tear off the tails and then de-vein the tails. To de-vein you grab the middle fin on the back of the tail and wiggle it back and forth until it comes out. The vein will come along with it. We then throw the tails into a cooler full of ice. We give them one more rinse at home and then boil them. We use "Rajun Cajun" crawdad boil (a bag of salt and spice that you add to the boiling water) and throw in baby red potatoes, pearl onions, and corn on the cob.

Trust me, this method is way easier than the purging approach. We saw it on TV a few years ago and tried it out. Works beautifully and nobody has ever gotten sick.

If you can't find any by where you are camped, drive over to Haw's Point.

Good luck. Your kids will have a blast.

I'm going to have to try your way to prepare the crawdads. We've always just eaten them as soon as we catch them because I hadn't heard of a way to prepare them at home without keeping them alive.

Thanks for this tip.

In Texas, I've seen them prepared such that they are extremely spicy hot.

I ate them in New Orleans.....i think it was crawdads....you bite off the head, suck out the insides, etc....

Didnt taste all that great. What am I missing here? Why is it fun?

Becasue you get to bite off their heads and suck out the insides. Very primal. Very Ozzy without the drug addled-ness.

Only the coon asses do it that way.

My mother says the head is the best part.

If you just eat tails, it seems hardly worth it. Gotta eat the claw meat too.

I am unfamiliar with that insult, but judging from the plain language, it doesn't seem very positive.

At any rate, not sure if you have ever been to New orleans, but this is not an uncommon way to serve them in restaurants. You can buy them buy the bucketful.

I just didnt get what was so great about the goo.

The tail was fine.....not unlike shrimp.

I hadn't thought of it that way before.

I have eaten live shrimp at sushi bars before. That was pretty crazy. Not a big fan.

That's roughly translated as a cajun-style redneck. It's a term of affection in some parts.

Only to coon asses.

Last time we were in NO I wanted to buy a big bottle of "Butt Burnin' Coon Ass BBQ Sauce" (this was the actual name on the label) for my wife's parents as a Christmas present. She did not think it was nearly as amusing as I did.

And then only from other coon asses.

It was the best thing about Fort Polk. I develped quite a liking for the little mudbugs.

The only fat is in the brain and it renders during boiling. The rendered fat and the juices from the boil taste the best.

Some claws are big enough to eat.

The first time I attended a boil I thought it was the most counterproductive event I had witnessed. The amount of calories spent getting to the crawfish tail had to exceed the caloric intake the small bit of meat provided. However, I then concluded that this was southern culture at its finest. Folks there have a great deal of time on their hands, what with not being saddled with such pesky things as gainful employment and whatnot. Hence, why not spend 4 hours eating dinner. Once I had crawfish a few times it grew on me. During the season I would get 5 lbs at some shack off post and my wife would eat the spuds and corn while I wolfed down the crawfish and a gallon of whole milk.