Either way, I was glad to see he did not advise you pour salt on the crawfish to "purge" them, just rinse them. Seems like 75% of the "cajuns" advise you pour salt on them even after common sense should tell you it does nothing and LSU did a study to prove it does nothing but give you more dead crawfish. The only way to "purge" them is put them in a holding tank and not feed them for a couple days. Short of that, all you can do is wash them.
I'm no expert at boiling crawfish but my .02:
1) Too much salt.
2) Not enough water in the pots.
3) Too many sides in the pots.
4) Water not boiling hot enough.
5) Sausage in the pots makes greasy crawfish.
6) Ice in the pots is bad
So undercooked, oversalted greasy crawfish could be a reason why nobody ate them. Also they are hard to peel this time of year, that could be a factor too. All those people could not kill 45# of crawfish. Either the crawfish were bad or you're friends are not crawfish eaters. I can kill 10 pounds by myself if they peel easy.
Excellent post RR. I used to do a couple boils a year but haven't in a while so I am a bit out of practice.
1. I probably should watch again but it didn't look like too much salt to me. I always acted on the understanding that boiling water should be as salty as seawater. In a large pot it takes a lot of salt. I thought he used a half of a containerbut Imcould be wrong. But salt is the first thing I add to the water and make sure that is right before adding anything else. I would rather have too little than too much. No coming back from that.
2. Once again I thought the water level was fine. If anything he put too much crawfish in the pot at once. Even with two pots, that is not enough water volume to do a sack and a half of bugs in one shot. At least for my comfort level. I would have done it in two batches. And old Cajun friend of my dad from Pierre Part would do a single sack in a huge washtub. It worked.
3. I agree on the sides but I am a total minimalist in those regards. I mainly eat crawfish. But it is a YouTube video so they were pulling out all of the stops here. At a normal crawfish boil there is no need for all that.
4. I agree on that as well. Really didn't notice that at first. The water needs to be boiling so hot that it should be jumping out of the pot. With as much crawfish as he added at once the rebound time would be pretty long.
5. I am not a fan of boiled sausage and don't get the point of adding it to the pot. Yeah you will get greasy shells.
6. Quite a few guys do the ice trick. I am not a fan, but mainly beacause I do multiple batches and don't want to dilute the water. What some guys do is freeze water in a couple of old milk jugs and toss that in the pot. It was explained to me once why it was a good idea but I never saw a difference. Season the water correctly and mind your times and everything should work well.
Thanks for mentioning the salt purge. that was a popular way to do it in the past.
All in all I am sure the crawfish turned out just fine. His basic technique was fine. I have seen much worse. The reason there were so much leftover was that there just wasn't a bunch of crawfish eaters there. If I was there that pile would have been much smaller
