Spice It Up Wednesday! Crawfish Boil

So what kind of spices do you need for a crawfish boil?

Tony Chachere's, of course!

Lots of it.

Zatarain's Crab Boil (This is SACK sized for those BIG sacks of crawfish.)

Did you know there was a special sauce mixture you can eat with your crawfish? This was new to me! You can choose from the basic ketchup with a bit (lot) of Tony's sprinkled on it~

Or, you can go for the 'secret recipe' sauce which starts with a LARGE lump of mayonnaise.

Sprinkle Tony's all over the top of that mayo.

Add in some ketchup and stir.

Then peel those crawfish and dredge them through the tasty, spicy sauce.

Friends and Family

Crawfish boils aren't a one-man (or woman) thing. They are large events for family, friends, and neighbors to all gather together and enjoy!

The Right Equipment and Process

These guys that boil the crawfish know what they are doing. You can see that they have been doing this for a while, and they learned from their dads who learned from their dads, etc. In cajun culture, it seems the men do the barbeque-ing and the crawfish boiling and a lot of the other cooking.

I can't tell you how to boil crawfish, we can just look at the pictures and summarize what's happening together!

Dump the live crawfish in a big pot, hooked up to gas to make the water boil. All sorts of stuff goes in that water (but we will save that for Spice It Up Wednesday, Crawfish Boil edition).

When the little mudbugs are done boiling (no idea how you know when they are done), then you will need a LARGE piece of wood and some heat resistant gloves to pull that bucket out of the boiling water. (Nothing should be moving in the pot anymore. If things are moving, I know they haven't boiled long enough.)

Let the water drip out of the 'basket'.

Dump the crawfish into a large cooler. (Those are onions, I think, that were boiled with the crawfish.)

Shake a little Tony's (Who am I kidding? He's holding 2 cans in 2 hands.) Shake a LOT of Tony's in with the crawfish, and then shake the cooler up well.

Then all you need is a tray to hold your crawfish while you dig in!

Crawfish Boil Week

Our church had a crawfish boil yesterday afternoon for all the choir, drama, and technical workers that are making our Easter musical happen. This week my posts will be about this event and the details of what a crawfish boil is all about.

The main thing needed for a crawfish boil is...crawfish!

No shortage here~ 250 pounds of crawfish!

So stay tuned this week, as each day will have a new post about a different part of the cajun crawfish boil!

What Is Tasso?

I went to Merriam Webster online this morning, but the only entry for tasso was referring to an Italian poet from the 16th century. That's not exactly what I was looking for.

So I headed to the often-unreliable wikipedia and found this description for tasso~

Tasso ham is a specialty of Cajun cuisine. It is a version of smoked pork made from the shoulder butt. In this case, "ham" is a misnomer, since tasso is not made from the hind leg of a pig. This cut is typically fatty, though leaner cuts are often used and have a great deal of flavor. The butt, which will weigh 7 to 8 pounds, is sliced across the grain into pieces about 3 in / 7.5 cm thick. These are dredged in a salt cure, which usually includes nitrates and sugar. The meat is left to cure briefly, only three or four hours, then rinsed, rubbed with a spice mixture containing Cayenne pepper and garlic, and hot-smoked until cooked through.

Tasso is not typically eaten on its own. It is used in dishes ranging from pasta to crab cakes, soup to gravy. Appropriate to its roots, tasso is most often found in recipes of southern or Cajun/Creole origin, such as jambalaya.

And now I get to find out all about tasso for myself since a great friend gave me some that she made herself! It smells delicious. I think I'll start with a pot of red beans....

Spice It Up Wednesday!

Anyone ever tried this one? I can't judge all these spices as good or bad...I just point out the unique spices I find on the shelf. Somehow this one feels like a mixture of a photo gallery at Olan Mills and a milk carton...I'm not so sure....