Relish Austin

Crawfish season is here, but mudbugs can be hard to find

Central Texas food blogs

RSS feed

What's on this page?

Commenting is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. M-F

More recent entries

Statesman Blogs

Austin360 Blogs

All Blogs

Blogs FAQ

Comments

The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Hailing from the Ozarks, Addie Broyles expanded her cooking (and eating) skills on the West Coast and Spain before settling in Austin, mainly for the aguas frescas at the taco stand down the street from her house where she, husband Ian and son Julian are now attempting to grow their own food in the backyard. They recently welcomed another baby boy and two chickens to the family.

Relishing food is about taking time to enjoy what has become the often hurried and mundane task of nourishing our bodies. Relish Austin is Addie's search for things that make her go "mmmm." High brow, low brow. Fast food, slow food. In Central Texas. On the Web. On the streets. In your garden and in your kids' lunch box. In your refrigerator and on your dinner table.

Relish Austin is also the name of Addie's print column that appears in the Austin American-Statesman a few times a month.

Unless otherwise noted, all photos are by Addie Broyles.

"Try some of Austin's best margaritas on our Gowalla trip. Just don't try them all in one day."

Check out Relish Austin on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

If you are a food blogger in Central Texas, consider joining the Austin Food Blogger Alliance, a newly formed nonprofit organization whose mission is to set an ethical standard for transparency and fairness for bloggers and coordinate classes, social events, and philanthropy projects for the food blogging community.

If you use an RSS reader, here is feed for Relish Austin: XML.
Learn more about RSS.

The entry titled "Crawfish season is here, but mudbugs can be hard to find."

Home > Relish Austin > Archives > 2010 > March > 24 > Entry

By Addie Broyles | Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 07:00 AM

For many Texans, dainty bluebonnets on the side of the highway are a sure sign that spring has arrived. But for a sizable portion of the population not too proud to wear a bib when they eat, spring officially arrives they can dive into a pile of bright red crustaceans at a crawfish boil.

Call them crawfish, crayfish, mudbugs or crawdads, these miniature lobster-like animals live in streams and lakes, but 90 percent of the crawfish we eat come from the watery lowlands of Louisiana.

Lucky us who live within a day’s drive of the state. From the end of February through late spring, grocery stores and seafood markets bring in fresh crawfish to sell, but it’s always a little tricky knowing where to find them on any given day.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been asking around at local stores, and some of them will have them one day and they’ll be gone the next. Many places seem to get orders in on Friday, which is likely because of the weekend crawfish boils like the one my friend Ryan hosted last week.

He bought his crawfish for $4 a pound at Crawfish Shack and Oyster Bar (2013 Wells Branch Pkwy, 252-7556), which has them pretty reliably this time of year.

Sambet’s (8650 Spicewood Springs Road, 258-6410) is another sure-fire place to buy them. Quality Seafood (5621 Airport Blvd., 452-3702) and MT Market (10901 N. Lamar Blvd., 454-4804) frequently have them for sale, but call ahead. Calling ahead is also a good idea if you’re planning on shopping at Fiesta Mart (3909 N. Interstate 35, 406-3900 and 5510 S. Interstate-35, 373-7800), Central Market (4001 N. Lamar Blvd./206-1000 and 4477 S. Lamar Blvd./899-43000), H-E-B or any of the other chain grocery stores, which have unreliable availability, even in the height of the crawfish season.

Plan far enough ahead and you can pay Crazy Cajun Crawfish to deliver the little guys to your house.

So how do you put together a crawfish boil? It’s pretty easy, considering how many people you can feed for relatively little work. You’ll need a few pounds of crawfish for everyone (although seven of us couldn’t finish 18 pounds of crawfish last Friday), as well as red potatoes, corn, sausage, garlic, onions, cayenne pepper, crawfish boil seasoning such as the kind made by Zatarain’s or Louisiana Boil and possibly shrimp (depends on how “pure” you want to keep your boil).

(Learn how to purge the crawfish here and get a full rundown on a proper Cajun-style crawfish boil here.)

Boil ingredients and serve on a table covered in newspapers — preferably used copies of the Austin American-Statesman — with a side of butter, hot sauce and lemon wedges.

And if you’re in the mood to experiment, don’t forget the wonders of Vietnamese-style crawfish, which photographer Penny De Los Santos discovered in a number of Houston restaurants and blogged about.

Have you had any luck finding crawfish in your local market? I know there are some restaurants in Central Texas serving up some killer crawfish right now, but I haven’t had a chance to check them out. Any recommendations?

Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: Cooking

More archives...

When commenting, we ask that you keep things civil and abide by our Visitor Agreement. To report comment abuse, click here.

By christy horton

March 26, 2010 11:29 AM | Link to this

Quality Seafood is probably the best source for throwing your own boil. Here is the latest news from them: Crawfish Update: “We will be bringing in Wild Caught, Washed Crawfish until the season ends. Place your order by Wednesdays at noon to guarantee your reservation. They will be approx 3.99 per pound and we have a 20 pound minimum order.” If you are looking for restaurants carrying them, they are available on Mon. and Tues after 5pm thru 4/27 at Pappadeaux’s for $4/lb. Theirs are ok but the real deal is huge oysters for $4 per dzn. The best crawdads I’ve had so far were at Razoo’s up by IKEA in Round Rock, very spicy! $4.50/lb at happy hour and $5.99 the rest of the day.

By Mark

March 30, 2010 9:48 AM | Link to this

How has no one mentioned Razoos? They have the BEST crawfish I’ve ever had in Austin, unfortunately the only Razoos open is the one open near IKEA in Round Rock now.

By David

March 30, 2010 1:56 PM | Link to this

Seven of you couldn’t even finish off 18 pounds???!!! Ametuers!

By Dana

April 1, 2011 5:15 AM | Link to this

Parrain’s on 1431 in Jonestown has really good crawfish, and the best shrimp poboy around here.