By Bob and Dhoug Kong
Served with pot boiled red potatoes, good crusty bread, and lots of hot garlic butter prepared ahead.
Bob and his family were in the Louisiana shrimp business for many years. Part of that business was harvesting crawfish (called doodahs locally.) Bob eventually served a stint in the Air Force and settled in California with his Thai wife after his military service. He still loved crawfish and he taught me how to fish for them in the rice fields of Merced California.
Crawfish are muddy by nature and need to be kept alive for five days, or more, to clean out. If you don’t do this they taste muddy. Commercially available crawfish that are sold dead, in my opin- ion, are usually no worth eating. I got several plates with the muddy taste in New Orleans but this recipe is different. Crawfish can be kept even months, but they would loose body mass. Keep damp in a large cooler propped up with a brick on one end and the drain open. Don’t crowd cray- fish too deep, three inches deep or less is ideal. If deeper, ones on the bottom die sooner.
Crawfish are boiled in five minutes. Cook no more that your pot will hold without loosing a good boil, 50 ~60 at a time is good for a large lobster pot.
Dip out crawfish into a bowl or tray. Just before you cook the crawfish, toss on a handful of salt. This helps clean them out.
Fill large pot with water 3⁄4’s of the way full. When boiling, add potatoes at the bottom, 3 lemon grass stalks, one crab boil pouch, and 1⁄2 cup of oil, 2 tablespoons cayenne pepper (yes that is right!). Allow potatoes to boil until just done then start adding a bunch of crawfish, cooking them in bunches for 5~6.
Cover a butcher-block table with newspaper and white meat wrapping paper. Serve Doodahs in a small galvanized bucket and a bowl of steaming potatoes with hot garlic butter and sour- dough bread. Everyone for themselves. Pass the napkins please!
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