Crawfish Boil

Seafood and tagged

Ingredients

  • 1 sack of live crawfish, 35-45 lbs.
  • 1 5 lb. bag of LA Fish Fry Company Crawfish boil powder mix (yellow bag)
    • Pro Boil (black can as of 2025) also good
  • 3 lbs. lemons, halved
  • 3 lbs. onions, halved
  • 2 to 5 lbs. garlic, halved (can sub box of peeled toes, but they will turn to mush in boil)
  • 3-5 lb. bag red potatoes
  • 1-2 lbs. sausage, chopped into 1-2 inch pieces

Optional Add-ins

  • Corn on the cob, cut into pieces. Fresh is better, but frozen mini cobs are the standard
  • 3 heads of celery, halved, leaving bottom half in bunch
  • 1 8 oz. bottle of liquid crab boil
  • Cayenne pepper

Preparation

Prepare boil pot

  1. Add water to pot. 2/3 to 3/4 full depending on how big the pot and sack of crawfish is. Remember to leave room for the crawfish. Too much water is better than not enough.
  2. Crank burner up to get water boiling. Place the strainer basket inside the pot before adding any ingredients.

Prepare ingredients

  1. ​While water heats up, prepare vegetables: cut lemons, onions, and garlic in half horizontally, no need to peel onions or garlic. Add all vegetables and powdered seasoning to the pot, making sure the strainer basket is in place before adding. Bring to a boil. 
  2. Once water boils, let vegetables cook for at least 10 min before adding crawfish.  While water is heating, prepare crawfish.

Prepare Crawfish

  1. ​Empty sack into large ice chest and thoroughly rinse by plugging the ice chest and filling with water. 
  2. Let them swim for 5 min or so, then pull the plug and drain. 
  3. Repeat this process until the water runs clear from drain.  Do not leave the crawfish under water for an extended amount of time or they will drown. Don’t worry this takes hours to actually kill them. Pick out any obviously dead one at this point.

Cook Crawfish

  1. ​Prior to dropping crawfish ensure you have a violent rolling boil.  Drop crawfish into water and stir submerging all.  The object is to get water back to the boil as quickly as possible. 
  2. Once water is boiling again, cook for 5 minutes, then turn off heat. 
  3. Stir immediately to help start cooling.  If doing mushrooms and corn, drop them into pot now.
  4. Spray side of pot with hose to cool further. Continue to stir until water is no longer boiling. 
  5. Let crawfish soak.

    The soak time will directly affect spiciness. between 15-30 minutes is typical. Taste within 5 min to determine spice level and adjust seasoning.  To shorten soak time and/or increase spice add 8oz of liquid crab boil and some cayenne.  Continue to stir every 5 min or so to help cool and try to keep rotating the floaters to the bottom. Keep tasting until desired spice is achieved, sometimes up to 30 minutes.

  6. Add sausage around the 5-10 minute mark of soak. If you prefer the corn to not be boiled to death, you can wait to add these now as well.
  7. Pull em out, let drain for a minute or so, dump on a table or in a cooler and have at it.

For posterity, here’s the back of the napkin scribblings from a boil back in 2016:

  1. Add water to pot, turn on burner
  2. as water comes to boil, add powder, salt and splashes of liquid crab boil
  3. add bay leaf, whole red potatoes, halved onions, halved lemons, garlic
  4. test potatoes for doneness, once done…
  5. add crawfish and cook 5-8 minutes
  6. cut off heat and soak 30 minutes
  7. add sausage, mushrooms, corn and whatever else while soaking
  8. check saltiness and add more if necessary