Discover cooking with Oregon's homegrown crawfish

BX00146_9.jpegThe cranky crawfish above was not born on the Louisiana bayou. He hailed from the Clackamas River near Estacada, and some aficionados say his kin are bigger, sweeter and milder than Southern crawdads.
Special to The Oregonian

Mudbug. Crayfish. Mudpup. Crawdaddy. Crawfish.

Whatever you call them, those little freshwater crustaceans are delicious, relatively inexpensive, easy to cook, and make a fun and unusual alternative to a summer barbecue.

Second cousin to the larger and more expensive Maine lobster, crawfish taste like a cross between shrimp and lobster, and are found in lakes and streams the world over.

Native Americans and the first European settlers harvested them. Today, kids still pull the critters out of local waterways with a line and hotdogs (or just about anything). Savvy fishermen catch them by the trap-full, while farmed crawfish production continues to grow.

Recipes included with this story: Lila's Creole Crawfish Étouffée, Jakes Famous Crawfish Boil, Louisiana-style Crawfish Boil

While Louisiana supplies more than 90 percent of the nation's crop of crawfish, Oregon is the second-largest commercial producer. The Northwest's native Pacifastacus, or the "signal" crawfish, is a bit larger (up to 6 inches) than Louisiana's Red Swamp crawfish (up to 4 inches), and many say the meat is sweeter.

Billy Hahn, executive chef at Portland's Jake's Famous Crawfish restaurant, uses only Oregon's wild, native crawfish. "Our crawfish come from sandy-bottomed Lake Billy Chinook," he says. "The ones from Louisiana come from rivers and backwaters that have a lot more silt and mud. Our crawfish are very clean-tasting and have no muddy flavor at all."

Some prefer the sweet, delicate flavor of Oregon's crawfish, while others like Louisiana's stronger-tasting version. Louisiana crawfish need to be purged for 15 minutes in salt water to remove any mud from their systems; crawfish from Lake Billy Chinook or other sandy-bottomed sources do not.

Crawfish preparations differ, too. One traditional method is to cook them in a well-seasoned liquid called a "boil," a method often used for crab, too. At Jake's, chefs make the "boil" with a French court bouillon, a broth made with vegetables and herbs, which enhances the natural flavor of the crawfish without making them spicy.

Other crawfish lovers, such as Kham and Khang Nguyen, brothers and co-owners of My Brother's Crawfish in Southeast Portland, prefer a spicy, Cajun-style preparation. The Nguyens grew up in Houston eating spicy crawfish and, for them, the hotter the better. They not only make their own dry and liquid seasonings for crawfish boil, they add a bit of Asian heat, including their mother's sweet-hot crawfish dipping sauce. "We grew up eating Cajun food and we love it hot," Khang says.

"Crawfish boil was a Sunday ritual for us," adds Kham, who is the restaurant's chief cook. "Now we cook up 400 pounds of live crawfish and 50 pounds of tail meat every week."

Crawfish should be cooked live. Like other crustaceans, the meat of a crawfish begins to deteriorate after the shellfish has died, and once cooked its meat is likely to taste mushy. The experts at Pacific Fish and Oyster on Southeast Powell Boulevard suggest tossing out any raw crawfish that are dead rather than cooking them.

In Louisiana, crawfish are traditionally cooked outdoors in a large pot over a propane burner, but they can also be cooked on your stovetop.

Portlander John Brennan, a sales manager for a local chemical company who lived in Louisiana for a number of years, holds an annual crawfish boil for 150 to 200 people in his backyard. He has 150 pounds of crawfish shipped from Louisiana the first weekend in June. (Spring/early summer is Louisiana's traditional crawfish season; Oregon's season lasts until early fall. In recent years, advances in aqua farming have made crawfish available nearly year-round.) "They ship them on dry ice in a waxed container," he explains. "When crawfish get cold, they go to sleep."

Brennan fires up three 60- to 80-quart pots filled with water, the pre-mixed seasoning he gets from the crawfish supplier, and a few fresh lemons cut in half. When the water comes to a boil he tosses in red potatoes, corn, onions, mushrooms and spicy sausage (cut into pieces), and cooks for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Then he adds the crawfish and boils them for five minutes. He turns off the burner and allows everything to soak in the spicy mixture for 15 minutes.

A traditional crawfish boil doesn't even require dishes. Simply drain the crawfish, potatoes, corn, sausage, and other ingredients and spread them out on newspaper. Pass the paper towels and beer or soda pop for an easy summer feast.

Of course, there's plenty more you can do with crawfish. If you've ever had crawfish étouffée (pronounced ay-too-fay), a rich and spicy roux studded with delectable bits of crawfish, you know how wonderful it is. You can also make crawfish pie, bread and pasta. And you don't even have to cook or shell live crawfish because you can buy frozen cooked crawfish tail meat from a number of sources (see accompanying box).

Trey Corkern runs a food cart in downtown Portland called The Swamp Shack, where he specializes in dishes from the deep South. For his signature fried crawfish pie, he stuffs a small fold of buttery dough with crawfish, onions, peppers, rice, cream and Creole cream cheese (a type of farmer's cheese) and pops it in the deep fryer. The result is flaky and creamy, with just a little heat to let you know it's Southern.

If you're still intimidated at the thought of cooking your own crawfish, you can get your crawfish on at the Tualatin Crawfish Festival on Friday and Saturday, Aug. 13-14, or the Crawdad Festival in Zigzag on Aug. 21-22.

Food and travel writer Bobbie Hasselbring is editor of She can be reached at

How to eat crawfish

Tackling crawfish for the first time can be intimidating, but it's simple to get at the delicious tail meat:

1. Grasp the crawfish head with one hand and the tail with the other hand. Gently twist to separate the two pieces. Discard the head.

2. Pull off the fan tail end and discard.

3. Grasp the sides of the tail and pinch to break the shell's spine.

4. Turn tail over and hold either side with thumbs. Separate the shell by gently pulling sideways and extract the meat.

Get a taste at these local festivals

Tualatin Crawfish Festival, "The Nation's Oldest Crawfish Festival," Friday and Saturday, Aug. 13-14

Tualatin Commons, 8325 S.W. Nyberg St., Tualatin,

Crawdad Festival, Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 21-22

Skyway Bar and Grill, 71545 E. Highway 26, Zigzag, 503-622-3775;

Restaurants serving crawfish

Jake's Famous Crawfish
401 S.W. 12th Ave.
French-style (not spicy) crawfish boil, chilled crawfish appetizer, crawfish étouffée

My Brother's Crawfish
8220 S.E. Harrison St.
Louisiana-style crawfish boil, crawfish étouffée, crawfish burgers

The Swamp Shack (food cart)
484 S.W. Stark St. (just south of Fifth Avenue)
Open for lunch Monday-Friday
Fried crawfish pie, crawfish étouffée

Sources for live or frozen crawfish

Most live crawfish sold by these stores is from the Northwest, but the frozen crawfish may be from as far away as China. If the source of your crawfish matters to you, be sure to ask where they're from before buying.

Pacific Fish and Oyster
3380 S.E. Powell Blvd.
(Live crawfish by special order only -- two-day notice required.)

Om's Seafood Market
3514 S.E. 76th Ave. (at Powell Boulevard)

ABC Seafood
6509 S.E. Powell Blvd.

10500 S.W. Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, Beaverton

Louisiana crawfish

Louisiana crawfish will not be in season again until next spring. But if you prefer it to local crawfish, these are two sources.

Doguet's Crawfish Farm
16939 Highway 90
Beaumont, Texas 77713
409-752-5105, 409-866-2297

Cajun Grocer
1-888-CRAWFISH (272-93474)