Cajun Seafood Boil

Throwing a seafood boil with a big group of friends is by far my favorite way of getting people together. Eating pounds and pounds of shrimp, crawfish, crab legs, and even throwing a few lobster tails in there, elbow to elbow with friends. You don’t need plates, just line your table with newspaper and dump your boil right in the middle.

An important thing to note is you really need to find a good source for your seafood. Louisiana Crawfish Company is a website where you can buy live, purged crawfish and have it delivered the morning of your boil. Crawfish season is at its best in March and April and goes through June, so keep this in mind when planning a time for your boil. If a place is advertising crawfish in the middle of august, odds are they’ve been dead and frozen for awhile. Fresh is best. For the rest of our seafood needs we hit a few different places depending on who has what. In Wisconsin, Festival foods, Sendiks, &St. Paul Fish Co. are our go to’s for shrimp, lobster, crab. etc.

Ingredients:

• 2 Bags of Zatarain’s crab boil seasoning
• 2 bottles liquid concentrated Zatarain’s crab boil
• 1/4 cup Creole Seasoning
• 1/2 cup salt
• 4 tbs pepper
• 4 tbs smoked paprika
• 5 large onions, quartered
• 4 garlic heads, cut in half to expose the cloves
• 8 lemons cut in half
• 4lbs andouille sausage, cut into bite size pieces
• 4 lbs baby red potatoes
• 15 lbs live crawfish
• 15 lbs shrimp
• 5lbs crab legs
• 5 lobster tails
• 12 ears frozen corn on the cob
• 1 bag of celery chopped in thirds
• 1lb butter
• 6tbs minced garlic
• chopped parsley for garnish

Instructions:

1. Fill a propane heated turkey fryer (do this outside) 2/3 full off water. Bring to boil.
2. Add boil bags, liquid boil, all seasonings, onions, squeeze lemons into pot, then add the lemon halves in, and garlic. Boil 10 mins.
3. Add potatoes, boil 7 mins.
4. Add sausage, boil 7 mins.
5. Add crab legs, shrimp, and crawfish, boil 5 mins.
6. Add in lobster tails, boil 3 minutes.
7. Turn off heat, add frozen corn, and cover pot. let soak for 20 mins.
8. While the boil is soaking, melt butter and saute garlic in it.
9. Using the fryer basket, lift your solid ingredients out and dump onto newspaper lined table.
10. Pour garlic butter over the seafood, reserving some in dishes along the side for dipping.
11. Top with parsley for garnish, and dig in.