Cajun Crawfish Boil Brings Louisiana Specialty and the Fixins to Pacific Eagles

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By Pauline Masson – Cajun crawfish – crawdads as my dad called them – return to Pacific after a popular feed last year.

The Pacific Eagles will hold its second annual Cajun Crawfish Boil this Saturday April 16, at the Eagles Hall, 707 West Congress from 12;00 noon until the crawfish run out.

Doug and Vicki Brinker, Jim Harris and Toma Dew have put together a Louisiana style crawfish festival on the covered patio beginning at about 11:00 a.m. They will start the boil at eleven and the curious and hungry are welcome to watch.

On the bill, one pound of  crawfish, with traditional fixins – corn on cob and red potatoes – will cost $12 plate. A side dish of Vickie’s red beans and rice with andouille sausage will also be available for $3 a bowl. Advance tickets available at Eagles Social Room Bar.

Live cajun music all afternoon will liven up the festivities.

If you’ve never tasted crawfish, you’re in for a treat. These pretty little crustaceans, that look for all the world like miniature lobsters, have a taste that is between shrimp and crab but they are a bit firmer and meatier.

Crawfish (also called crayfish, crawdad, or mudbugs) are freshwater crustaceans that are common around the world.

I have ta long connections Crawdads because they were one of my dad’s favorite dishes. There was a so called crawdad hole on the creek that ran across our farm in North Arkansas where Dad would catch them in a home made trap. But eating them was the real fun.

There’s a trick to it. You break the head off then peel off the skin, something like peeling a shrimp. Full instructions, found on the Internet, can be found at the end of this blog.

I have to confess, I have not had crawdads in what seems like a hundred years and have never had to break one open. Eating them was one of the grand party times of my childhood. Dad made a big production of breaking each crawdad open. He set the head aside for himself and peeled back the shell and pulled out the morsels of meat for my sister Kathleen, my brother Tom and me. He went through that same ritual of serving each morsel any time we had fish. He would rub each piece of fish between his fingers before putting them on our plates to make sure there were no bone.

Crawdads don’t have bones but they do have pincers. Dad could reach into a bucket and pick up one of the crawling crawdads by the shell. But Tom, who was over eager at everything he did, always managed to get pinched, which added to the fun.

Eagle Doug Brinker has ordered 300 pounds of live crawfish from the Louisianas Crawfish Company in Natchitoches, Louisiana, the crawfish capital of the word. They shipped two million pounds of live crawfish last year. They’ll peel them for you if you prefer, but it’ll cost you a little more. One pound of crawfish meat costs $25. The ideal way to cook them is to buy them live.

The idea for the crawfish boil at the Eagles heralds back to the Dew Bolt Inn in Catawissa were crawfish boils were a staple, so Toma Dew is an old hand at this spring time delicacy.

Here is one instruction on how to eat them that I found on the Internet.

The proper way to eat crawfish: Hold the crawfish on either side of the tail joint. 

Using a twisting motion, snap the head away from the tail. Optional but recommended: suck the yellow stuff, also known as “crawfish butter,” out of the crawfish head. Discard the head, then using your thumbs, peel the shell away from the widest part of the tail, as you would peel shrimp.

If you like any kind of sea food, or if you just like a good time, come by the Eagles  for the Crawfish Boil.