What do crawdads taste like?

IMO there is a reason they cook crawdads in gumbo or other stews that are loaded with spices and flavors in order to mask the otherwise very fishy taste of them critters. Nothing at all close to lobster or crab.

That’s kind of what I wondered, @Cruiser. I wonder if letting them hang out in fresh water for a few days before you kill ‘em would help that taste at all. I heard you can do that with catfish.

I am guessing similar to crawmums

They are good, but I couldn’t think of anything their taste resembles. Fishy, not quite shrimp.

@Dutchess_III I was taught to soak catfish fillets in milk to mellow out the fish flavor and now wonder if this would work for crawdads as well?

There is just not much meat. The tail is “shrimp like” and does not have much flavor on its own. That’s all I’ll eat, I can’t bring myself to “suck the heads” I will say when all spiced up…pretty good when they are fresh.

In the old days when you had to go hunt them up from your local swamp, they mostly tasted like the swamp mud from whence they came. They weren’t called “mud bugs” for nothing.

Nowadays when you can buy them at the supermarket, they’re mostly cultivated so there isn’t that muddy aftertaste.

But there are plenty of good reasons why they are almost exclusively found in dishes with tons of spices to disguise their less than delicious taste.

What I think is criminal is to take those delicious little Blue Claw Crabs and overwhelm them with spices. Old Bay and all the rest of what they add just completely drowns out the delicious sweetness of the crab meat.

I got spoiled as a kid because I was able to go catch my own either with a net from the piers or a crab trap with my rowboat.

Then I’d put them in that big crisper drawer that was the whole width of the refrigerator. bottom until I had enough to boil up a big pot.

All they really need is some melted butter (and maybe a little garlic) to be absolutely fantastic.

But I’ve never been able to find anyplace serving them that way. They always have them in a pot with ten tons of spices dumped in with them and I just can’t handle that much heat.

They serve Lobster with drawn butter. Why not do the same with crabs? They really don’t need all that crap dumped on them.

I agree @Buttonstc. And the same goes for a good cut of beef. It doesn’t need anything (salt and pepper is OK) but it certainly doesn’t steak sauce or shudder catchup.

I’ve been to several crawfish boils in Louisiana. They had the texture of shrimp but the flavor of the Spicy Crawfish boil flavoring. That burned my mouth and made me sweat. There were also onions, potatoes, corn, and garlic in the pot for flavoring and eating. The whole mess was dumped onto a row of picnic tables and everyone “bellied up to the bar” and dug in.

@Dutchess

There are a few gourmet beef places that refuse to put condiments on their hamburgers. Nothing. If you don’t like that, then go get a burger someplace els .

But they also have the meat custom ground from high price cuts (Short ribs, etc ) not typically found in hamburger meat. So of course they want you to taste the flavor unadulterated with anything other than s&p.

@LuckyGuy

And that’s why I’ve never eaten cawfish, ha ha.

But the fact that they treat delicate, sweet tasting little crabs the exact same way is a CRIME.

You’ll never know if you eat them only smothered in spicey jambalaya. The Swedes have a crawdad festival, Kraeftskiva, every August 7th. The crayfish are boiled with dill, sugar and salt and you serve them cold—guests peel and eat them with their hands, like we often do shrimp. It tastes fishier than the saltwater crustaceans I’ve had. But they were good. The Swedes get theirs mostly from Turkey. Every once in awhile a batch of crawdads, or crayfish, from the Gulf states might have a swampy flavor to them, especially if they’re been taken from still bayou waters, but this is solved by marinating them in milk overnight.

@ragingloli No, crawmums taste more fishy.

Crawfish Bisque:
Take two or three dozen crawfish, throw them in boiling water for a minute or two, clean them thoroughly. Take off the heads, empty them, and clean them and wash them, keeping the fat part of the tails. Put them on a chopping board with the fat, a little chicken or veal, a little stale bread, chop it all fine together, flavor with pepper, red or black, a laurel leaf, or put in a bouquet of aromatic herbs for a few minutes, having tied it with a thread so as to pull it out. Brown all this in a saucepan with a spoonful of lard. Stuff the crawfish heads tight with this. Put them in a saucepan to simmer with a quart of bouillon for an hour or more, until you have a good soup. Serve hot.

How long is a quarter of a billion of an hour?.....Oh. Nevermind….