Frozen Crawfish Supplier: Whole Cooked Crawfish and Peeled Tail Meat

Product overview

Crawfish, or crayfish, is two products in the freezer. Whole cooked crawfish, boiled and frozen in the shell, is bought by the kilo for crawfish boils, Cajun and Creole menus, Scandinavian crayfish parties and the spicy Chinese-style dishes served in restaurants across China and its diaspora. Peeled tail meat goes into étouffée, bisques, gumbo, pasta, pies and ready meals, where the cook wants crawfish flavor without the shelling. Both are supplied frozen; we do not trade live crawfish.

The species traded under this name is the red swamp crawfish, Procambarus clarkii, native to the southern United States and north-eastern Mexico and now farmed or harvested in many other regions. China is by far the largest producer, raising crawfish in ponds and rice fields, and it supplies most of the whole cooked crawfish and tail meat sold internationally. Louisiana farms and wild-harvests crawfish mainly for its own home market, and smaller volumes come from wild harvests elsewhere, including southern Spain. We source through partner packers in these origins rather than from Thailand, and each offer states the country, whether the lot was farmed or wild-caught, and the plant where it was cooked and packed.

Whole crawfish is washed, purged and boiled, then frozen plain, in brine with dill, or seasoned with Cajun-style or Chinese spice blends, and packed in bags, trays or vacuum pouches that sometimes hold the cooking liquid. It is graded by piece weight, for instance 20⁠–⁠30 g or 30⁠–⁠40 g each, or by count per pound. Tail meat is cooked, peeled and frozen in vacuum bags or IQF; it is usually sold by pack weight, often 1 lb, with a count band only where the buyer sets one, and it may be packed with or without the yellow ‘fat’ from the head that many Louisiana recipes call for. Raw frozen whole crawfish can be arranged on request.

On whole cooked crawfish, buyers look at shell color, broken claws and missing legs, tail meat fill, grit left in the gut, glaze and the consistency of seasoning from pack to pack, and many read a high share of tightly curled tails as a sign the animals were alive when they went into the pot. On tail meat the checks are shell fragments, the vein, drip loss after thawing and the color and smell of the fat. Findings can be recorded against each lot code on request, and residue testing on farmed lots can be arranged; our guide to frozen shrimp specifications explains glaze and net weight in terms that apply equally to crawfish. For a larger freshwater crustacean, see giant freshwater prawn, and for a marine alternative with a similar sweetness, langoustine.