2 pot Crawfish Boil with Dak Prescott

12 Jun, 2024

2 pot crawfish boil with Dak Prescott

I've been boiling crawfish for over 25 years. Cooking crawfish is how I got my start in outdoor cooking. When I was first invited to a crawfish boil, I was immediately drawn to the communal nature of friends and family gathered around a table creating memories around enjoying food together in their backyard.

I was recently eating BBQ with the Dallas Cowboy's Quarterback Dak Prescott who is from Louisiana. We got to talking about a relatively new cooking technique called the two pot method. He suggested we get together with his Father and make a cooking video using this method.

Traditionally crawfish are boiled in one pot. Once the crawfish boil and are cooked, the challenge with the one pot method is to keep from overcooking them. Some people spray that pot with a hose to cool it off and others dump ice into the pot which dilutes the seasoning.

In 2022, Brad Orrison of The Shed in Ocean Springs, MS taught me the two pot method. Crawfish are boiled in clean water, which purges them, and are then dumped in a 140 degree soak pot where they take on flavor and heat (if you desire) without over cooking the crawfish. We realize not everyone has two pots, but if you have the tools, you will love the results from this method. One thing is for sure. This is our favorite cooking show video that we have ever done!

Video for this recipe -> https://youtu.be/c-qS7WKL4a4

2023 video with The Shed BBQ -> https://youtu.be/BRZmdEsRQqg

Ingredients

1 sack of live crawfish. We use Louisiana Crawfish Company.
1, 4.5 lb bag of Crawfish Boil Seasoning
8 oz (or more if you like it spicy Crawfish Boil Liquid Concentrate
6 large lemons halved
6 large white onions halved
4 cloves of garlic. Tip sliced off to expose.
4 sticks of butter
5 lb small red potatoes
3 lb sausage sliced.
1 dozen corn on the cob (cobbettes)

Optional items

16 oz white mushrooms
Other vegetables that loves the heat

Brussels sprouts, asparagus, cabbage

Cayenne pepper (only add if you are really trying to kick up the heat in the boil)

Tools

(2) 100 quart boiling pots with baskets and burners

Clean your crawfish
Rinse and purge the crawfish.

Dump the crawfish out of the sack and into a cooler with the plug removed. Run fresh water over them until they run clean. Remove any dead crawfish.

Prepare the Soak Pot
This is the pot the crawfish will soak up all the seasoning goodness. Fill the pot to the top of the fill line.

Drop in the entire bag of dry crawfish seasoning and however much liquid concentrate seasoning you want based on your desired spiciness of the crawfish and vegetables. the more you add, the more spiciness. Dak used 1/2 a bottle in this video and this was a slightly spicy first batch.

Add the butter, lemons (juiced then drop them in), onions & garlic.

Bring this pot to 140 degrees while stirring.

Prepare the Boil Pot
This is the pot the crawfish will boil in. Technically, the boil pot also purges the crawfish. Fill the pot to the top of the fill line. Be sure not to overfill the pot. You will be dumping the crawfish and vegetables in the water and don't want it to overflow when boiling.

The boil pot can be left with simply clean water. However, in this video, we added one 4.5 lb bag of seasoning since we had it on hand and it is realtively cheap.

Bring the water to a boil.

Drop the potatoes and sausage in the boil.

After 10 minutes of boiling the potatoes and sausage drop in the live crawfish.

Next add the mushrooms, corn and any other vegetables you are including.

Turn your burners wide open for maximum fire and bring them to a boil.

When the water returns to a boil, turn the fire off, killing the fire.

Soak the Crawfish
Remove the crawfish from the boil pot and place in the soak pot. You can either transfer the basket over (remember your soak pot vegetables are in the soak pot) or you can dump them into a basket in the soak pot.

It doesn't hurt to have NFL lineman Brock Hoffman on hand to transfer the heavy pot for you!