Crawfish, Beer, Friends

To say I'm overdue for a blog post is an understatement. What can I say...life happens.

For the second year in a row, I spent a lot of my summer in Louisiana for work. When I found out that all my my coworkers/friends would be back in North Carolina together the weekend before my birthday I decided to take advantage of having all of us in the same state for once. What better way that to have a good ole Crawfish Boil?

 I did some searching in Louisiana for the best way to get the mudbugs up to the piedmont of North Carolina and finally settled on the good folks at Louisiana Crawfish to ship the delicacies to me. It was a pretty sweet deal actually. They not only sent me two bushels of life, purged crawfish but included all the seasoning, a koozie (of course I planned to do a lot of drinking), and I was able to order some fantastic andouille sausage from them.

I was able to specify my delivery date and before I was even fully awake on Saturday morning (I prefer not to raise before lunch) the UPS guy was knocking on my door.

He said "Just tell me where I need to be when I get off work so I can get in on some of this action!"

I swung over to Harris Teeter and grabbed all the other fixins need to pull this off (my first ever). The great thing about Crawfish, Crab, and Low Country Boils is that anything goes, really. I grabbed a dozen ears of corn (later snapped them in half), two things of button mushrooms (probably the most popular item with my crew...now I know), baby red potatoes, and whole garlic cloves (SO good).

I've seen artichokes, carrots, celery, and more thrown in the pot. Up to you.

We all live in apartments so we opted to do the boil at the most central complex, which unfortunately was not mine. I loaded up my car (thank goodness I bought an SUV last fall) and drove over.

Surprise, surprise everyone was already drinking by the pool when I showed up to set up. I enlisted the help of my buddies Sean and Nico to do a lot of the lifting and water retrieval (we had to fill the pot in the shower). I repaid them with the first crawfish from the pot, which they graciously accepted.

Now my buddy Sean has been begging for a Crawfish Boil since I met him...I found out that day that he's never had crawfish...nor had 18 of the 20 guests arriving. This would be an adventure.


 I use a 60 quart pot when I do a boil, I was able to crank my crawfish out in two batches and then the veggies is another batch. The good thing was that the crawfish could steam in the cooler while the next batch and veggies were going. Makes them a bit spicier. Don't be fooled...these were the most mild crawfish I've ever eaten...but I did them that way to make sure the amateurs could handle it. The veggies, soaking in the heavily seasoned water, however, packed so much heat it made up for it!

I made sure to create an epic Zydeco playlist to crank, had more than enough beers on ice (plus folks paid me in Bourbon) and enjoyed teaching everyone how to suck their first heads and peal shells to reveal the sweet, juicy meat.

Just remember, each step in the cooking process requires you consume a beer...if you have helpers...they need one too. Make sure you don't run out!

 

Listening to: "Oh Katrina" by the Voice of the Wetlands