Name: Shrimp, Crab, or Crayfish Boil
Yield: Yields about 1 cup or enough for 10 to 12 pounds of shellfish
Cuisine: United States
Ingredients: 5 tablespoons Shrimp, Crab, or Crayfish Boil; 4 teaspoons salt; 1 onion, sliced; 2 whole garlic cloves; 2 teaspoons whole celery seed; 8 teaspoons whole mustard seed; 8 teaspoons whole black peppercorns; 12 bay leaves, crumbled; 4 quarts (4 L) water; 3 pounds (1350 g) shrimp, crab, or crayfish in the shell; 24 whole cloves; 12 dried red pepper pods, quartered

Preparation info

Yields about
1 cup

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Bill Neal's Southern Cooking

By Bill Neal

Published 1985

About

Through there came a smell of garlic and cloves and red pepper, a blast of hot cloud escaped from a cauldron they could see now on a stove at the back of the other room. A massive back, presumably female, with a twist of gray hair on top, stood with a ladle akimbo. A young man joined her and with his fingers stole something out of the pot and ate it. At Baba’s they were boiling shrimp.

Eudora Welty, “No Place for You, My Love”