Add a salad and this tasty entree can be an
entire meal if you so choose.
Just a note: There is a school of thought that dictates that you are not
supposed to eat dead crawfish unless they have been precooked while fresh.
We can't verify this as we practice primitive survival traits and have
eaten recently dead "dads".
Ingredients:
40 large crawdads or 60 average (live)
3 tsp salt
1 tsp Garlic powder
1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper
2 cups of rice uncooked
3 tablespoons of cooking oil (coconut preferred - available at ethnic food
stores)
1 medium onion - Diced
1/8th fresh Scotch Bonnet pepper or 1 Jalapeņo Chopped fine
Black pepper
Optional - 1 Cup of frozen green peas.
Place 4 cup of water in a sauce pan with a lid and bring to a boil. Add
1 tsp of salt, 1 Tbs of cooking oil and the rice to the boiling water.
Stir then cover with a lid and reduce the heat to a low simmer. Note the
time on a clock. Cooking time is 20 minutes and do not stir or remove the
lid during this time.
Bring 2 quarts of water, 2 teaspoons of salt, the garlic powder
and cayenne pepper to a rapid boil in a pan. Rinse and add the crawdads to
the boiling water and wait till they fully turn red in color and then boil for one
additional minute (about 3 minutes total). Too long makes them tough and
bitter.
Remove the crawdads and rinse with cool water and drain. In order to get
the meat out of the crawdad or a shrimp for that matter, you leave the
tail on the body and twist off the tail fin and about half the tail shell.
Then still using the body as a handle you twist of the balance of the tail
shell casing. You will then have a chunk pf meat hanging onto the
rear of the body. Pull this off and toss it on the growing pile of meat.
This beats removing tail and then peeling it and is the fastest way
we know but would like to hear of any other ways. On very large ones you
can do like you would with a lobster or prawn, remove the tail, break off
the fin and then push the meat out with a fork or similar.
*** This is about 50 small crawdads shelled and
ready to eat. The little bit of green that pulls out with the tail meat
gives it flavor and is best not washed off. Note the bowl of
store bought shrimp and the poor color and with little flavor by
comparison.***
When the rice is done place the 2 TBS of oil and the meat in a
large frying pan on high heat. Stir for 1 minute then add 1/2
of the onions and the chopped pepper. Continue to fry and stir for 2 minutes, than add the rice.
Turn the mixture frequently until the rice gets slightly brown. Add black
pepper to taste. Next add 1/4 cup
of water, the balance of the onions and then the peas if desired,
stir, place a lid on it, reduce the heat to about half, and let
simmer for 4 minutes.
Serve while steaming hot.
Yields about 6 large serving.
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