How to properly clean crayfish for eating

The aromatic and appetizing boiled crayfish will not leave anyone indifferent. But to get to the delicious meat, you need to know how to peel crayfish from their chitinous shell. In addition to the tail (crayfish neck), these arthropods have many more edible and tasty parts. But before cutting crayfish for food, they must first be cooked.

Cleaning fresh crayfish before cooking

Crayfish live in rivers and lakes, where they dig deep burrows for themselves in underwater steep cliffs or banks that plunge vertically into the water. They can swim, but more often wander along the muddy bottom in search of prey or sit out in burrows. It is clear that earth, pieces of silt, and mud settle on the shells. Therefore, before boiling caught crayfish, they must be thoroughly washed and cleaned.

Crayfish caught or purchased at the market should be placed in clean water for a couple of hours. During this time, their intestines will be cleansed. Then you need to clean the shells from dirt. For this:

Drain the dirty water that contained the crayfish completely and fill it with clean water. Leave for 5-10 minutes, stirring vigorously from time to time.
Replace the water and repeat the operation.
Change the water and rinse one last time.
If dead crayfish float to the surface during washing, they must be removed and discarded (only live crayfish can be boiled).

After this you can start cooking. Sometimes before cooking, crayfish are soaked in milk for 1-2 hours. This is believed to improve the taste of their meat.

You can clean these arthropods with salt water. They claim that this way they are better and faster cleaned of dirt.The cleaning procedure is approximately the same as in clean water. Only in the first two washes a cold salt solution is used. But the crayfish do not need to be kept in brine for a certain time. Immediately after stirring, drain the salt water and add fresh water for final rinsing. After cleaning with salt water, crayfish cannot be stored, as they will quickly die; they must be boiled immediately.

Cooking time is 20-30 minutes (depending on size). Salt and seasonings are added to taste. Crayfish are thrown into boiling water only alive.

How to eat crayfish correctly

Professionals eat crayfish almost completely, leaving only the shell and a few giblets. Amateurs eat only the tail-belly, throwing away half of the delicious delicacy. As it is, everyone chooses for themselves. But in any case, to get to the meat, you must first remove the shell. Cleaning crayfish is not difficult.

This is done in a certain order, at the same time we will describe all the edible parts:

First you need to inspect the tail, if there is caviar under it - it is edible and tasty.
Then you should tear off the thin walking legs. Under no circumstances should they be thrown away, as they contain meat, and if the cancer is large, then quite a lot. It is not difficult to get this meat - break the legs at the joints and squeeze the contents into your mouth with your teeth.
Now you can separate the claws. They contain not much less delicacy than the crayfish neck. The edge of the shell near the joint must be opened, cutting with scissors, or gnawing with teeth, and through the resulting hole, remove the meat.
Holding the crayfish with your left hand turned onto its back, slightly tilt its head down and carefully, with a breaking movement, separate the abdomen from the cephalothorax.If this is done carefully, then a delicious broth will remain in the front part of the shell, which should be drunk as if from a cup.
Pull the edges of the shell in different directions. It will burst at the junction with the head. Grabbing the tip of the head, separate it completely.
From the inside of the head, you should eat all the pulp with the orange mass.
Scrape off the white mass from the inner surface of the shell - this is fat. It is edible and quite tasty.
Using a breaking motion, separate the gills from the abdomen (crayfish neck) (they are gray) and suck out the broth from them.
The meatiest piece left is the abdomen (tail or crayfish neck). First, you need to tear off the tail feathers located at its tip, then suck out the broth from under the shell. After this, remove the triangular plates from both sides of the abdomen. You can break them off with your hands, but this is quite difficult, you can get hurt. It is better to use scissors or bite it off with your teeth. After this, you can easily separate the upper and lower parts of the shell. Remove a thin strip of meat from the top of the crayfish neck - it comes off easily. A dark strip will open under it - the rectum. It needs to be removed. After this, eat both pieces of tasty and tender meat.

If everything is done correctly, then at the end of the meal, only the shells, squeezed out gills and some entrails will remain from the crayfish.

Some tips

If live crayfish brought home are not cooked immediately, but are left “for later,” they do not need to be released into a container with water. It is better to leave it in the air, sprinkling it with water occasionally.
If arthropods are to be stored for a long time, they should be rinsed with water from the shower, placed in a container with pieces of ice and put in the refrigerator.This way you can keep them alive for several days by periodically draining the melt water.
Before cooking, remove the ice from the container and give the crayfish time to warm to room temperature.

We advise you to read the article about how to peel fresh shrimp