Stella, May I know how you cooked your first mudbug?

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Of course you may. It's crawfish season! I only know that because our market started carrying them.
Did you know crawfish was also called crayfish, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, and mudbugs? I have only known them as crawfish. If you haven't had them before, I would describe them like tiny lobsters that require a lot of peeling and you don't get a lot of meat. However, the tiny amount of meat you do get it especially flavorful For today's Tutorial Tuesday I will be sharing how I cooked crawfish for the first time. (and yes,I am back with food posts!)
At our market we got to pick exactly which ones we wanted. I chose the mudbugs that were moving and had a bigger tail. Since this was our fish time making crawfish at home we didn't get a lot. This is less than a pound.
 To clean them: rinse them in salt water. I mixed together some salt and water prior to placing the crawfish in, but I don't think it makes a difference. This is an old popcorn bucket.
 In goes the crawfish!
 You can see immediately the water becoming muddy and the dirt releasing from the crawdads.
Look at those pinchers! After this picture was taken, this little one tried to grab my fingers and I dropped him back into the bucket. (the pinchers have some meat in them, but they are so small they weren't worth picking out.)
This is the second rinse and the water is still muddy. You want to rinse them with salt water until the water is clear. It took us about 4 rinses. I used less salt with each rinse. The first rinse had about 3 tablespoons and the last rinse had just a sprinkle.
 Oswald's first encounter with a crustacean. He was not impressed.
 Spices. In the middle is cayenne pepper, the red one is paprika and going clockwise from the paprika: garlic, coriander, allspice, cloves, thyme, dried onions.
 Carrots, potatoes and sausages. If we had corn, they would be in the mix.
 Crayfish are finally clean and are just waiting to go into the boil, but we need to first cook everything else.
After you pour all the spices and a couple pinches of salt into boiling water (we used about a gallon of water here), add in the potatoes. Cook the potatoes until you can pierce them with a fork and them remove the potatoes. Make sure you have your potatoes all at the same shape so the cook at the same rate. After you remove cooked the potatoes, add in some whole garlic cloves, quartered onions and sausages. Then remove them when they are cooked. I cooked everything separately since they all cook at different rates. I didn't want one thing to be over done while others be not finished cooking.
 After you remove the potatoes, onions and sausages, add in the crawfish.
Bring the water back up to a boil, and boil them for two minutes. Then turn off the heat and let the crawfish continue cooking with the lid on for another 10-15 minutes (depends on the size of your crayfish).
 And you are done! Scoop them all out and you are ready to eat!
 We only had limes on hand, but it would be served with lemons.
 Me and Mister's crawfish boil dinner.
Crawfish Boil Recipe serves 2
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
½ heaping tablespoon each of: garlic powder, paprika, ground cloves, allspice
½ tablespoon each of: onion powder, dried thyme, ground coriander, ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
at least 3 tablespoons of salt
1 pound of crawfish
two potatoes cut into the same size
1 quarter onions
5-8 cloves of garlic
2 links of sausage
ears of corn
1. Rinse the crawfish with salt water until the water runs clear. 2. Bring a gallon of water to a boil then add all the spices, herbs and salt. 3. Add in the potatoes and cook until a fork is able to price through them, about 12 minutes. 4. Scoop out the potatoes and add in the onions, garlic, sausage, and corn. Scoop out when they are cooked. 5. Add the crawfish into the pot and bring to a boil. 6. Boil for 2 minutes and turn off the heat. 7. Let the crawfish continue cooking the the water for 10-15 minutes. 8. Scoop everything out and serve!

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