Spicy Crawfish Boiled Peanuts

It’s crawfish season again, one of my favorite times of the year! While I can never seem to get enough crawfish during the season, it can be an expensive habit to keep up with, especially early in the season when prices are the highest. A few pounds of crawfish with corn and potatoes will easily run you up to $30 a person. So to satisfy my taste for the spicy, salty goodness of  crawfish, I’m turning to boiled peanuts.

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These Crawfish Boiled Peanuts are a great way to get a fix for that boiled crawfish flavor any time of year. The recipe uses a lot of the same flavors as a traditional crawfish boil, but on a much smaller (and cheaper) scale. You'll want to start with green raw peanuts in the shell. This recipe uses 2 pounds of peanuts, but you can always scale up or down, depending on how much you're wanting to snack on. With the peanuts, we added 4 tablespoons of Crawfish Boil Seasoning, 2 tablespoons of Liquid Crawfish Boil,  1 tablespoon salt, 1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper, and 8 cloves garlic, peeled. Since there's a good bit of salt in the crawfish boil seasoning, you don't want to add a lot of salt. 

This batch boiled for 3½ hours. We like our peanuts to still have a little bite, but if you like a softer nut, they can let it boil for up to 5 hours. I added at least another 6-8 cups of water throughout the boil. Keep an eye on the pot and if the peanuts are sticking out of the water, go ahead and add some more. Pull out some of the liquid to cool and taste every now and then. You shouldn’t have to add more seasoning, but you can add a little more towards the end, if you think it needs it. 

Once the peanuts were done, I turned off the heat, put on the lid and let them hang out for twenty minutes. This gives the pot some time to cool down. Like resting a piece of meat, as the pot cools, those juices will absorb into the shells, giving the peanuts more juicy goodness and more flavor. 

After 20 minutes, you can take the peanuts out of the water and dig in. I like to pour a little bit of the boil juice and another sprinkle of the Crawfish Boil seasoning on top of the peanuts while they're still warm. It's not quite the same as a Crawfish Boil, but it's enough to get me by until the next one! 

Thanks for Chewsing!