CRAYFISH BOIL THE SWEDISH WAY
Once the crawdads are cleaned it's time to cook them. The cooking time is a fun event that always fascinate my kids. The crawdads are roughly sorted by size so the cooking time is even for each batch.
One-by-one they are dropped in to the fragrant dill and beer liquid which has reached a roaring boil. One second the crawdads are dark, brown, even bluish in color and the next they are all bright - delicious looking red.
Drop them in one by one
Once they are floating to the surface, after 5-7 minutes they are done.
What follows here is my traditional Swedish Recipe for how (I) cook Crawdads. It is very different from the southern US way of doing it and gives a amazingly fragrant and tasty result.
I have several other tasty Crawdad recipes from Southern Louisiana Crawfish Boils to Spicy Cajun Butter Fried Mudbugs that I hope to share later. Stay tuned for more ...
Kräftkok - Traditional Swedish Crawdad
2 quarts of live, cleaned and purged crawdads
Brine2.5 quarts of water
2 bottles of dark beer
English or Baltic Style Porters is to prefer. Stay away from chocolate or coffee flavored porters
0.5 cups of coarse cosher salt
3 tbsp of sugar or 1 tbsp of honey
Lots of whole dill, at least 10 for cooking and 5 for later.
CRAWDAD COOKING
Rinse the crawdads in cold water. Check that they are still alive.
Sort the crawdads according to size Large - Medium. They should be boiled with roughly same sized crawdads for even cook time.
Put all ingredients, except the crawdads in a large enough pot. Crank up the temperature and let it boil for 10 minutes.
Use a slotted spoon to remove the dill. Put the dill aside - you will use it later.
Drop the live crawdads in the boiling water. Only put a few in at a time - say 5 - 10.
Let crawdads boil for 5-7 minutes. Once they are floating they can be picked up with a slotted spoon.
Fill a large pot or container with cold water. When the crawdads that are done cooking are picked up they should be put in the cold water to cool down.
Once all crawdads are boiled turn off the heat and let the water cool down.
Once the brine is cool add back all the crawdads and the cooked dill to the brine.
As a last touch, add the remaining dill on top of the crawdads.
Leave the crawdads in the brine, in a fridge, for 24-36h.
Let the crawdads rest in the beer and dill infused brine for 24h
EATING
The crawdads can be eaten cold. My preference is to give them a flash boil and then server them.
Remove the crawdads from the brine.
Crank up the heat until the brine is boiling.
Add all the crawdads to the brine and leave until the water is boiling again. Remove the crawdads immediately with a slotted spoon. Don't mind the dill that is clinging to the crawdads.
Enjoy
Ready to put on platters and serve the hungry guests.