Grilled Crawfish with Old Bay Aioli

Get your Mardi Gras on with grilled crawfish served with homemade Old Bay aioli. This recipe is fun in the backyard or on a camping trip.

What is crawfish and what does it taste like?

A crawfish is a crustacean that lives in water. In the United States, they are mostly harvested from swamps and rivers in Louisiana.

Crawfish are also sometimes referred to as crayfish, crawdads or mudbugs.

Like a lobster, they turn bright red when they are cooked and most of the meat is in the tail. And although they do have claws, the claws are generally too small to yield a significant amount of meat.

How to prep for a crawfish dinner

This is one of my shortcut recipes that I take on camping trips to elevate our trip to the 5-star glamping level.

The day of your fabulous campfire dinner, take the crawfish out of the freezer to thaw. When it’s dinner time, light the campfire, and place a grill grate on top. Then, dump on the mud bugs and squeeze with lemons.

I’m pretty far from the Louisiana bayou, so I use pre-cooked crawfish from the freezer section. If fresh crawfish or live crawfish are easy for you to source, boil them before your camping trip and freeze them.

The Old Bay Ailoi can be made in advance and stored in the fridge, until dinner time.

CAMPING REMINDER: Be sure to dispose of all of the crawfish shells. Otherwise, wily coyotes might swing by once the fire is out to grab their share of the Mardi Gras fun.

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Ingredients

• Pre-cooked crawfish: You’ll find this in the freezer section. Thaw in the fridge before grilling. Frozen crawfish is usually pre-seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, spices, paprika, onion and garlic.
• Lemons

Aioli Ingredients

• Mayonnaise
• Ketchup
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Old Bay Seasoning

SUBSTITUTIONS: If you don't have time to make the aioli, you can also serve the grilled crawfish with a drizzle of melted butter and hot sauce. 

See the full recipe card below for servings and a full list of ingredients.

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How to grill crawfish

1. STEP ONE: Heat your grill or campfire to high with a direct heat zone. Dump the bag of crawfish onto the grill grate. Squeeze the juice of one lemon over the crawfish.

2. STEP TWO: Grill for 10-15 minutes. For even cooking flip occasionally until the crawfish are heated through.

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How to serve crawfish

Twist the grilled crawfish tails and remove the meat from the tail. If you see the digestive tract, it’s best to remove that, too.

For extra flavor, squeeze the juice from the other lemon on top of the tail meat. Serve the crawfish meat with the aioli dipping sauce.

Crawfish go great with a cold beer and grilled corn on the cob.

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Storage

Store leftover grilled crawfish in the shells or remove the meat and store the meat separately for 3-4 days in the fridge. Store the ailoi in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

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