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These Are The Best Months For Eating Wild-Caught Crawfish In Season

Crawfish may be called the "poor man's lobster," but the creatures are culinary royalty in parts of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and other Southern states. Cajun and Creole cuisine is seafood-centric, and often includes this curious little freshwater crustacean with multiple monikers: crawfish, crawdad, crayfish, and mud bug. They're seemingly everywhere, with renowned festivals, backyard crawdad boils, and countless restaurant menus featuring the spunky, 10-legged, hard-shelled lobster-lookalikes. But in reality, there's a specific season for joining the crawdad party, and its peak times are relatively short. 

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In the South, the crawfish season can start as early as November and last through early July, but that doesn't mean it's ideal eating the entire time. Things like flavor, texture, and availability can vary considerably. That's especially true for wild-caught crawfish rather than farm-raised ones, which are generally more predictable due to the controlled environments in which they're housed. For a realistic perspective on the best months for eating wild-caught crawfish, we reached out to an expert in the field.

Chef Johnnie Gale, the Corporate Chef at Guidry's Catfish and Ocean Select Seafood, tells us: "The peak crawfish months are March, April, and May." She further explains why, sharing that, "crawfish are tender and easy to peel in the early months. Later in the season, the shells start to get hard." We all know that cracking into any hard-shelled crustacean is a challenge, whether it's lobster, crab, or those cute little mud bugs — so, the earlier, the better for eating crawfish, especially considering the double reward of more tender, succulent flesh. 

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Peak season crawfish tradition and lore

As with most cherished local traditions, eating crawfish comes with loads of stories, customs, and yesteryear lore. Chef Johnnie Gale shares some of those treasures with us, one involving lobsters and crawfish. "Cajuns of Louisiana do have a wonderful folktale," she says. "Lobsters followed them across land from Acadia to Louisiana, growing smaller and smaller on the way." This references historical aquatic journeys when Acadians migrated from Nova Scotia to Louisiana in the mid-1700s, with the tall-tale shrinking occurring as North Atlantic lobsters traveled alongside their vessels, molting repeatedly along the way.

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Gale reveals another important cultural role of crawfish in the region, one that aligns with the peak spring season. "A crawfish boil has become a Good Friday Louisiana tradition," she notes, "with newspapers, boilers, and mounds of the creatures rolled out to mark the end of Lent." Catholicism is traditionally the prevailing religion of Cajun communities, and they aren't shy about marking religious holidays with gusto, including colorful Mardi Gras parades and tombstone painting for All Saints' Day.

Hosting your own crawfish boil is surprisingly easy. It essentially involves a huge pot of boiling water, a sack of fresh live crawfish, and lots of seasoning, which is sold commercially in spice mixtures, such as this Zatarain's Crawfish, Shrimp, and Crab Boil mix available on Amazon. Accompaniments, boiled along with the crawfish, typically include potatoes, cobbed corn, smoked sausage, onions, halved lemons, and other bits per family recipes. Just don't be shy; seafood boils get messier than you might think!

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