Fried Crawdads

I had never eaten a fried crawdad until I married my husband and this is now my favorite way to cook them. The cornmeal gives them the best taste and with a bowl of pinto beans, there is nothing finer. This is What's Cookin on Beaty's Creek today.

Needed:
3 pounds of *see note below* clean SMALL crawdads with third tail piece and head removed
4 cups of white cornmeal
1 cup of all purpose flour
Salt to taste
Oil for frying

Place about a 1/4" of oil in a cast iron skillet and heat over a medium burner. Now place the cornmeal, flour and salt in a mixing bowl and mix well. After cleaning crawdads, place in the cornmeal mixture and coat well. Just as you would do when frying fish. Cook in a single layer in your skillet and brown on each side for about 5-10 minutes per side, depending on your heat source. That usually happens in about 10 minutes at my house but make sure you don't burn the little critters. Seems odd to eat shell and all but this is because you only fry the small size crawdads. When eaten this way they have a nice crispy crunch similar to fried shrimp.


*This is how we clean our crawdads after we have cleaned our crawdads, Hee hee. Bring water to almost a boil in your tea kettle. Now pour hot water over your prepared crawdads and mix them around in the water. Pour water off and then cook crawdads as you like.