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WTF? People actually do this?
In any case, Californians are annoying, yes, and ‘Texan or Californian’ is a major division in my corner of Texas, it doesn’t seem quite as different- most Californians here are openly critical of California even if they have some difficulty assimilating. I’ve heard in Austin they’re worse than in DFW. Had no idea they were moving to New Orleans in any quantity- then again anyone I talk to from Louisiana is mostly rural(living in a place that can attract migration only from Mississippi).
My guess is, as Frequent_anybody refers to, that there’s both liberal California migrants seeking higher purchasing power, who head to Austin or New Orleans, and conservative Californians seeking less progressive atmospheres who are willing to assimilate and that this latter group tends to head to DFW and Houston.
I am from Chicago and don't know anything about boils. How should I do it if I want to replicate the deliciousness I experienced on the Gulf?
How to explain to a Yankee…
In normal cooking, you season the food and then cook it so that the seasoning on the surface seeps into the food. But crawfish and crabs have shells, so doing that would be like smearing ketchup over the wrapper on your McDonald’s hamburger. I’m sure it’s distinguishable somehow from not doing that, but it probably doesn’t have the effect you’re going for. Instead you season the water, then let the water season the food. To do that, you steep the seasonings in hot water, bring it all the way to a boil, and then add the food- crawfish and corn cobs and potatoes and sausage.
And obviously there’s ‘seafood boil’ mixes at the grocery store, but most people who learned from their grandpas don’t go strictly off of old bay even when it’s the base of the ingredients list. A ham bone, a few slices of lemon, some bay leaves, onion quarters, smashed garlic cloves, jalapeño slices- some things of that nature can go a long way. It seems like northern whites are usually too leery of spice when a bit of kick can really bring it together, and this is probably the root of the ‘white people don’t season their food’ stereotype.
Also, know your seafood. Shrimp cook dead but crawfish cook live, and crawfish that died en route to the water need to be thrown out(their tails are straight- the ones good to eat will have curled tails). Some things cook faster than others, too- alligator needs to be added well ahead of shrimp, for example. Your cooking temperature is 212 degrees(duh, it’s a boil) so times go off of that. The basic crawfish-precooked andouille or kielbasa-corn on the cob-potatoes mix is popular because it’s cheap, but also because the cooking times are similar(and the sausage won’t be damaged by reheating).
So, the theory seems relatively similar to pasta. There you have boiling saltwater that is disgustingly oversalted as your medium for cooking the pasta, and a bit of that penetrates when you cook with the salt water and you end up with properly salted pasta. The boil just takes this a step further by adding more flavors than just salt, because while with a pasta you usually are going to be mixing it into a sauce after its cooked to almost al-dente (and you finish in the sauce) you don't make a sauce at the end. I presume you just add butter?
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As someone who has done this before, here's the logic: Once they're on your plate, and you realize they're underspiced, pouring seasoning on the outside of the shells is the only thing you can do. The seasoning gets on your fingers and is transferred to the meat as you are peeling them. It's better than nothing.
That logic seems about as suspect as the story of a civil war soldier who was hit in the testicle by a bullet, which kept traveling, impacted a teenaged girl in the uterus, and then they married after she had a baby from it.
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