How to Tell If Cooked Crawdads Are Good

Crawdads are a Southern delicacy.

Crawdads are also known as crayfish, mudbugs, or crawfish. Crawdads are the official state crustacean of Louisiana where they are frequently harvested. Crawdads are often prepared by being boiled with a variety of different flavorings and spices, and are used in a variety of different Creole dishes. While there is not a way to tell if a crawdad is good simply by looking at it, paying to attention to the source where the crawdad was obtained and how it was transported can help ensure that the cooked crawdad is safe to eat.

Instructions

1. Verify the source of the crawdads. Make sure that the crawdads are harvested from clean and pollution free sources of water. If at all possible, live crawdads should be obtained on the day that they will be cooked.

2. Ensure that the live crawdads are kept cold with ice and not simply submerged in water. The key to ensuring the survival of the crawdads is keeping their gills wet. This can be accomplished by keeping a constant supply of ice in the container used to transport the crawdads.

3. Ensure that the crawdads are clean by purging them in clean water. Replace the water in which the crawdads are being purged every 15 minutes. Allowing the crawdads to remain in the same purge water too long can deny the crawdads of oxygen.

4. Boil the purged crawdads. Do not cook any of the crawdads that died during transport or purging. Examine the color of the cooked crawdads. While crawdads may be dull grayish brown or bright blue while alive, fully cooked crawdads should be bright red.

Tips & Warnings

• Research has shown that the "curl" of the crawdad tail after cooking is in no way a sign of whether or not the crawdad was dead before cooking or diseased.

References

• State Symbols USA: Crawfish
• Cajun Shop: How to Cook Crawfish
• Crawfish Company: Transporting and Storing Live Crawfish
• LSU AG Center: Crawfish Tail Curl and Food Safety