NEW ORLEANS — During Lent everyone wants crawfish, and everyone also wants their crawfish to have that perfect spice. WGNO’s Kenny Lopez headed to Captain Sid’s Seafood in Bucktown to find out how they get their crawfish to kick with flavor.
“It is like coffee, you have to add the goods to make it really kick,” Brian Collins, the Assistant Manager at Capt. Sid’s Seafood said.
He said a lot of it is a matter of adding certain peppers like cayenne pepper.
“You really need to enjoy the flavor of it. You don’t want to get mouths burning. I don’t need to grab a cup of milk to kill the pain,” he said.
Collins said you want a spicy blend that kicks but doesn’t kill the flavor.
“You want to get it close to a 5 or 6 on the spicy level, so you can taste a little bit of spice, but you don’t want them grabbing water left or right. I would say if you can get it at a spice level of 6 then you are doing well,” he said.
He says for the inexperienced boiler it is best to buy the bags of pre-made and measured seasonings, which they sell at Sid’s and then all you have to do is dump it in the boiling pot.
The crawfish sits in a cooler for about a day before they put the crawfish into the pots.
At Sid’s on Fridays during Lent they sell more than 200 pounds of crawfish.