Friday, May 18, 2007

Crustaceans


I dissected a crayfish today. I won't be eating any crabs, lobsters, or any seafood for that matter for a while.
It was kind of gross. You had to use scissors to cut open the exoskeleton, which made a delightful crunching noise. Yummy.
The internal organs weren't as in depth as the worms. No blood this time (as the audience breathes a sigh of relief).
Honestly, my crayfish (dubbed "Vincent" by Jordan) was not exactly blog worthy. I was, however, the only one to make the incession with the heart in tact, which I was quite proud of.

2 comments:

JAM said...

Since you know what a crawfish's innards look like, I'll tell you how folks prepare and eat them. (Hey, I grew up in Louisiana, crawfish are the number one get-together food there. Like BBQ in other places.)

First, catch a bunch of crawfish. Keep 'em alive. Get a tub of some sort and put some warm, salty water in it. Dump your crawfish in there.

The warm salty water makes 'em sick and they throw up. How people determined this, I have no idea. But you'll see why folks want this to happen shortly.

While doing this as many times as one feels the need to have their innards cleaned out, you have a massive pot on a gas burner outside with about 4 or 5 gallons of water. Put in several bags of crab boil, it works like a tea bag, only with spices to spice up the water and whatever you cook in said water. Wash and throw in a whole bunch of small potatos, cut a bunch of ears of corn in half and throw that in there too. If you're of a mind to, chop a couple of onions into big rings an add to the mix.

When the water is boiling really hard, and the potatos and corn are almost done, dump the now clean crawfish into the pot. They'll cook in only a few minutes, turn red like boiled lobster and float to the top of the water.

Use a big holey spatula or spoon or something and scoop out all the crawfish, potatos, and corn and go dump it into a cardboard box on a table where all your hungry friends are seated. Waiting.

Reach into the box and grab handfuls of the crawfish, potatos, and corn and put them on your plate. Pinch a crawfish where the tail meets the body, twist, and pull the tail off. Then peel the shell off the tail meat like peeling a shrimp and eat it.

Mix in the eating of some 'taters, and corn with the repeated crawfish tails.

Hardcore crawfish eaters, eat the tail meat, then take the crawfish's body, where the tail was attached, stick that end in their mouths and suck out the crawfish's innards and juices all flavored up with the crab boil. That's why they try to clean them out by making them sick first, they plan to "suck the heads", i.e. suck out the innards to eat.

Eat until you can eat no more.

Gross, huh? Yeah. I'm not a "good" native Louisianian because I'd much rather eat at McDonald's than to pig out at a crawfish boil. Give me a burger any day.

Jenny said...

Uh...I really like crawfish but I would never "suck the heads"...ack!! And I never knew that about making them throw-up..interesting! And about your dissection..way to go on not mutilating the heart...I was the only one in my class that didn't mutilate my little pigs ears by trying to expose his brain! We should be proud! loL!!