where to get live crawfish for shipping

[bavila]

I've rounded up a decent posse of friends willing to pitch in for a boil here in Maryland. I even have a friend who works for FedEx who will take care of overnight shipping. Now the question is, where should I turn for someone who will package the stuff for me and have it ready for the FedEx guy? I'm thinking somewhere in New Orleans will be a good choice so that the crawdads can get to the airport ASAP. But I'm open to all suggestions. Oh, and what's the going price for live ones these days?

Merci beaucoups,

Bridget

PS

Just booked flights for the second week of Jazz Fest and I'm psyched!

[Mayhaw Man]

I will be glad to help you with this, but I need some detail that you might not want to cough up on line. email me and we can try to get it together. Several expats last year did the same thing, and it worked out. If you really have the shipping figured out, it's no big deal at all and won't even be particularly expensive.

Brooks

[bavila]

Well... since I never heard back from Mayhaw Man (did my 2 email attempts get through?), I called the alumni office at Tulane since I knew that they organized shipments to some alumni chapters that would then be cooked by alums. (My local chapter crawfish boil is usually catered by a NO restaurant that drives up with staff and equipment for the event.)

Anyway, they suggested Mr. Mudbug(504-465-9770) in Metairie. Mr. Mudbug is the catering arm of the King Creole restaurant in Metairie, which is a great place to go for happy hour beer and crawfish, by the way.

For my tentative guest list of 10 adults, Mr. Mudbug estimated the following costs:

$60=30 pounds of crawfish at $2 per pound

$4=seasoning

$50=handling (appropriate packaging, etc. I'm not sure if this varies by size of order)

$100=shipping by FedEx for overnight Saturday delivery, Louisiana to Maryland

Total of $214, not too bad, especially since I have a FedEx friend who will cover the shipping for me. Interestingly, they recommend 3 pounds per person for non-Louisianians and 5 pounds per person for natives. They also asked for a week lead time to fill the order.

I plan to post again after the boil (April 2) to let you all know how it went, but I thought I'd get this info up in case anyone else wanted to place an order themselves.

[Mayhaw Man]

Actually, I sent you a rather long reply concerning shipping and amounts (both poundage and dollar wise) via pm. I will go find it and resend, although what you found is pretty much the going rate, it looks like-though the per pound price might be a bit lower as you get closer to the event.

The Tulane ALumni office must get some interesting requests from hungry alumni.

[Varmint]

When exactly is crawfish season, by the way?

[bavila]

I'd say the dates vary depending on weather (crawfish will go dormant in winter temps), but in Louisiana, the peak is generally March-June time frame for live or boiled crawfish. In stores in Maryland, frozen tail meat (generally from China) is usually available for a longer period of time, but not year round.

[Varmint]

I'm just headed down to New Orleans this weekend, and I wanted to know if fresh crawfish is available now.

[patti]

Yes! Crawfish are in season and you should have no problems finding them. Enjoy!

[bavila]

Here's a story I wrote for the Annapolis Capital on the crawfish boil we had a few weeks ago. It's FINALLY online, and won't stay for long, so I've just copied and pasted... I left out the recipes as they are available in Folse's book.

Crabs are king for Marylanders, but Cajuns Crave Crawfish

By BRIDGET AVILA

Crawfish boils are the signature social event of spring in Louisiana, and every spring I get homesick for afternoons with friends and family spent lingering over a table of the spicy red beauties spread out over newspaper. Click here for recipes.

Marylanders know the joy of picking crabs and washing them down with an ice cold beer, as do folks in Louisiana, where many of the crabs we eat here come from. But steamed crabs just don't take the place of crawfish for me.

Most years, the Washington area alumni club of my alma mater, Tulane University, holds a crawfish boil in May, which is a good way to cure my crawfish cravings without the airfare to go home. But this year, to my horror, there would be no Tulane crawfish boil. Hubby and I decided that matters must be taken into our own hands. We would fly in the live "mudbugs" and host our own boil in the backyard.

In Louisiana, you can acquire live or boiled crawfish from local restaurants or seafood vendors, usually for about $2 to $4 per pound, or for free for those lucky to have a private crawfish pond. The places that we knew best for crawfish had larger minimum orders and higher shipping costs than the online vendor we chose. Cajungrocer.com can also be reached at 1-888-272-9347 and is a reputable source of a wide variety of food products from Louisiana, from links of boudin and andouille to tapes of Cajun or zydeco music.

Don't be afraid of hosting your own crawfish boil, it's like steaming any other kind of seafood. We used a 30-quart pot with propane burner - available as a "turkey fryer" at many hardware and home improvement stores for about $80 - to boil 20 pounds of crawfish in three batches. Following a recipe or the directions provided on cajungrocer.com caneliminate guess work and help you avoid overcooking and under-seasoning.

Vendors will recommend ordering 5 pounds per person if ordering for Louisianans or 3 pounds per person for everyone else. We went with an even smaller amount per person as we prepared other favorite dishes from my home state, like jambalaya and crawfish pasta salad. Cajungrocer offers orders of live crawfish as small as 10 pounds for $54.95 and includes next-day shipping, packaging, and seasoning packets, making a first-time boil a little less daunting.

Our party was set for 3 p.m. and we had just about worked into a sweat before the FedEx truck drove up at 11:50 a.m. with a cooler full of live Louisiana crawdads. We opened up the box, hosed the crawfish off and finished our preparations.

Not all of your guests may be interested in the spicy crustaceans you'll serve, so you'll probably want to offer other options. A cookbook like John Folse's The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine is a good place to find Louisiana dishes, and to learn about the many cultures that influenced the unique cuisine of the state. Weighing in at about ten pounds, this is not the kind of cookbook you can blithely toss about your kitchen, but a veritable treasure of history, photographs, and 700 recipes tested by Folse, who has been called "Louisiana's Culinary Ambassador to the World".

While area bookseller's and libraries have a decent variety of Louisiana cookbooks, Folse's tome is still somewhat of a regional phenomenon and not likely to be found on local bookseller's shelves. It is available at www.jfolse.com, or call John Folse & Company at 225-644-6000.

Live crawfish are generally available in the January through June, with a peak in April and May. As with any seasonal item, the crop will vary depending on the weather. But when it gets warm enough for you to want to spend the day outside in Chesapeake country, you should be in luck. All of the recipes that go with this story are from Folse's book, The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine.

Edited June 6, 2005 by bavila (log)

[Bolivar Petit Corona]

according to my local crawfish vendor, after the Louisiana crawfish season, they remain available all but a few weeks, from California sources