Even though Meat Church is synonymous with BBQ, I have boiled crawfish for over 20 years. I attended a crawfish boil hosted by some buddies years ago and was immediately hooked. I convinced the cooks from Louisiana to help me learn the craft at a young and went on to host huge, annual boils that became legendary. Crawfish cooks lead me to fall in love with cajun cuisine and have become heavily influenced by it ever since. I love the state of Louisiana, its people, and have taken tons of trips to Louisiana since Katrina to explore & dine. One thing I figured out early was there are so many different ways to cook crawfish and so many different items to put in the boil. The basics for me are to season the water to your liking, not over boil the crawfish, let them soak (but not too long), add a lot of potatoes, corn, sausage and whatever other vegetables you want your crowd to try and to NOT season the outside of the crawfish after. I've seen and tried a lot of variations over the years. 1 pot vs 2 (hot and cooler to soak), adding vegetables at different times to vary the heat level, etc. Here is our basic recipe we followed in this video but feel free to make it your own. The fun in outdoor cooking is changing, tweaking and testing new ways to cook recipes. Just get outside and cook something. Enjoy!
Video for this recipe - https://youtu.be/0lorIZggvco
Ingredients
- 1 sack of live crawfish (typically ~35 lbs)
- 1, 4.5 lb bag of Crawfish Boil Seasoning
- 8 oz (or more if you like it spicy Crawfish Boil Liquid Concentrate
- 1lb (or more if desired) Meat Church Holy Voodoo Seasoning
- 6 large lemons halved
- 6 large white onions halved
- 4 cloves of garlic. Tip sliced off to expose.
- 4 sticks of butter
- 5 lb (or more) small red potatoes
- 3 lb (or more) sausage sliced. We like andouille.
- 1 dozen (or more) corn on the cob (cobbettes)
- Crawfish boiling pot and burner
- We use Loco Cookers, but you can use any pot of your choosing. Academy Sports & Outdoors has great options
- Optional items
- 16 oz white mushrooms
- Other veg that loves the heat - cauliflower, asparagus
- Cayenne pepper (only add if you are really trying to kick up the heat in the boil)
- Anything else you want to add the boil!
Clean your crawfish
Rinse and purge the crawfish. I dump my crawfish out of the sack and into a wash basin or cooler. Then run fresh water over them until they run clean. Remove any dead crawfish. I do not use the old salt trick. I don't think it's necessary.
Prepare your Boil
Fill you pot and ignite the fire to boil the water. Be sure not to overfill the pot and you are going to dump the crawfish and vegetables in the water as well and don't want it to overflow when boiling.
Add the entire contents of the Holy Voodoo & your desired amount of crawfish seasoning (based on spiciness desired) to the water. For a large pot (100 qt or more) I like to add at least 1/3 of a gallon of the concentrate + plus some of the powdered boil seasoning. Add the seasoning to your taste. If you like it spicy then add more!
Bring the water to a boil.
While the water is coming up to temp add the lemons (I like to squeeze the juice in the boil then drop), onions & garlic.
After the water is boiling
Add the potatoes and sausage. Some folks add the corn and mushrooms here. I usually wait and add them when I kill the fire and the crawfish are soaking, but it works either way.
After 10 minutes of boiling the potatoes and sausage drop in the live crawfish. Turn your burners wide open (max fire) and bring them to a boil. When the water returns to a boil allow them to cook for 3 mins then kill the fire.
Add the mushrooms and corn. I love a Loco Crazy Spoon.
Allow the crawfish to soak for 20 - 30 minutes to add spiciness. When the crawfish are starting to drop in the water you know they are soaking up those spices. If you soak them too long the crawfish will turn into mush.
Dump the crawfish and fixins on a table and tell your friends and family to gather around!
