For a creature that not so long ago wallowed in brackish swamp waters, the crawfish looked good. Clean and bright red, surrounded by friends and on a pristine white serving platter. They were very clearly dead -- and very clearly edible.
With the turn of the calendar into spring also comes crawfish season, something realized through the many boils that took place in Northwest Arkansas in the past few weeks or those coming up in the next few. More than a half dozen boils will be offered before the end of the season, each very similar but keeping unique elements, too. There are many ways to skin a crawfish, it seems.
Fast Facts
How to Eat a Crawfish
Step 1 — Grab the crawfish on both sides of the tail joint, your thumbs on one side of the joint and your index fingers on the other
Step 2 — Twist at the joint, splitting the head from the tail
Step 3 — Suck the juices out of the head cavity, if you’re so inclined
Step 4 — Peel away the shell from the tail, starting with the widest part of the tail
Step 5 — Hold the tip of the tail, then gently pull the meat out
Step 6 — Eat the tail meat and repeat
Source — Southern Living magazine
Go & Do
Several crawfish boils are coming up soon in Northwest Arkansas. Here’s a list of a few of them:
Friday — 2-6 p.m., Simply Home Lending’s 8th annual Crawfish Boil, West End, Fayetteville
Saturday — 5 p.m., Natural Fools fundraising boil, Foster’s Pint & Plate, Rogers
May 16 — 5:30 p.m., Crawfish boil to benefit Girls Inc. of Fort Smith, location to be announced
May 23 — 4-8 p.m., Ales & Tales benefitting local ALS chapter, Fayetteville Town Center
— Source: Staff Report
Southern tradition
The tradition of crawfish boils comes from the state to Arkansas' south. The Agriculture Marketing Resource Center estimates that 90 percent of all crawfish are harvested in Louisiana. Approximately 125 million pounds of crawfish were caught there in 2010, a number that reflects both farmed and wild specimens. There are several crawfish farms in Arkansas, including Delta Crawfish of Paragould.
That's where Scott Mendham, president of the local Natural Fools chapter, sources his crawfish. He helps coordinate what he said is the area's largest boil, serving up about 1,000 pounds of mudbugs each year. Mendham said he ate his first crawfish about six years ago. All of his friends kept talking about them, so he thought he'd give it a try. He now attends several boils a year, most of them backyard affairs. But a crawfish boil also provided a fundraising opportunity, and now the Natural Fools, a cross-departmental organization for firefighters, is hosting its fifth such event on Saturday. The first few raised money for external recipients, but this year Mendham says the organization will purchase firefighting training equipment and also instruments to start its own pipe and drum band.
Matt McClure, the twice James Beard Foundation-nominated chef of The Hive at 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville, caught the crawfish bug after his return to Arkansas from the Northeast, where he studied at New England Culinary Institute in Vermont and also worked in Boston restaurants. The central Arkansas native wanted to come home, and he landed at Ashley's at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock. He and rest of the staff there would play around with recipes, but those never made the menu.
"We just did it for ourselves in the kitchen," he said.
He could find crawfish in Little Rock, or to its south. Having a crawfish boil inside the wonderfully fancy Hive restaurant was almost a personal mission.
"I felt like people would be excited about it," he said -- not least of all himself.
Swamp to plate
McClure developed a series of spices just for the occasion. And that's where a difference can be made. There's not a tremendous amount of variation in the boiling process. The crawfish for The Hive were flown in first class just for this event. They are cleaned and soaked and then placed in the boiling water while still alive.
That's very similar to the process followed by Tyrone Leake, who manned the boiling pots of crawfish for a large cookout at a Fayetteville bar. He met his crawfish connection in Little Rock, ensuring his batch would be fresh, too. Crawfish generally come in onion sacks weighing 35 to 40 pounds. For the crawfish boil at Brewski's on April 12, Leake cooked up about 400 pounds of the critters.
A Louisiana native himself, he learned his recipe from "a pair of meth heads on the roadside." But they could cook, and the recipe stuck with him. To the boiling water that served as the end point for the crawfish, he added big chunks of garlic, onion and jalapeno. There are traditional sides served at boils, too -- red-skinned potatoes and corn on the cob.
While those elements cooked through, Leake -- known to his friends simply as "T" -- prepared the next round of crawfish. First, they all got cleaned in a bath of cold water.
"They come out of the swamp. They're dirty," Leake said.
As the crawfish were cleaned, he also constantly monitored for dead or dying crawfish. Only lively specimens got thrown in the pot. Five to seven minutes later, the now-boiled crawfish were dumped into a large insulated cooler and doused liberally with Zatarain's brand of crawfish spice. Hungry patrons inside the bar waited, and the crawfish were served on brown cardboard trays that until very recently had cradled beer. At the Natural Fools boil, like so many such events, the crawfish and side items are dumped in great volumes on a table, where diners then grab them by the plateful.
From Head to tail
That the crawfish served at The Hive came on fancy white plates while waiters and waitresses doted on guests made little difference in the consumption process. No fork and knife works on a crawfish, so the hands it must be. The standard method involves twisting the head away from the tail. There are diverging camps about what to do next. Some suck the juices out of the head cavity, while others discard it straight away. Everyone aligns again in peeling away the thick tail exoskeleton to reveal the perhaps inch-long, curved chunk of white meat bordered in red. The accoutrements matter, too. McClure, in addition to the standard corn and potatoes, created a four-course meal out of the concept. He served up crab beignets, country ham, shiitake mushrooms and house-made andouille sausage, the latter another revered Cajun food tradition.
That alignment of souls is what Leake said the Brewski's event is all about. Crawfish costs him $7 per pound to buy, and the all-you-can-eat offer at the Fayetteville bar cost patrons $14. Considering how little of the crawfish is consumed, and how much is extraneous waste, it's easy to see how little profit is involved.
"We're not trying to make a killing off of it. We just like the community a crawfish boil creates," Leake said.
Kevin Kinder can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAWhatsup.
NAN Our Town on 05/07/2015