Popping my Crawfish Cherry

My first plate of crawfish

Delicious!

This weekend was jammed packed! The first thing we did was go to my works annual Crawfish Boil! I had never eaten crawfish and was a little nervous because there is a lot of technique to eating the little critters. Luckily Travis had learned some tricks the week I was gone since he went to a crawfish boil at his friends house to enjoy the festivities. Travis grabbed me a tray and littlerally took a scoop and poured in on my plate. No backing out at this point.
I had been asking a lot of questions at work on how exactly this process unfolds and everyone had different advice. Only eat the ones who's tails is curled under, pitch the tail and grab the meat with your teeth and so on. Most of it doesn't make since but you hope it will once you are put to the test of eating a crawfish. One thing I knew was that some people said they couldn't do it because once they looked at the crawfish they couldn't pull it apart. Therefore my technique was not to become friends with the crawfish. I took my plate from Travis and without making eye contact with the little crustaceans on my plate we found a seat and I was ready to learn the art of tearing apart a crawfish.
The process goes a little something like this. You push in the tail and twist, next you pull off the tail bit the meat while pitching the end of the tail and pull out the meat. If done right you can eat a lot of crawfish. For me as a beginner it was a little rough and I had to tear the critters apart more often then not. They were delicious though!!! Spicy and meaty it was a real treat! Another thing that native Louisianians do is what they call "suck the head." This is where once you've pulled off the tail and taken out the meat you turn the body of the crawfish over and suck out the "juice" they call it. I did try it a few times but looking into the crawfish's belly was kind of grossed and the juices were extremely spicy!!
Overall though I love eating crawfish! I love eating with my hands and getting dirty and this is the meal to do it!!! It is amazing how many people ate! An average person eats easily 5-10 lbs of crawfish. It sounds like a lot but most of the crawfish you throw away it is just the little meat in the tail that you eat...and the juices in the head :)