This spring, why not host a crawfish boil?

One pot, no plates — here's the backyard party we keep coming back to

May 16, 2026

One thing about me is that I wasn’t one to let the pandemic get in the way of gathering, even if virtually. Confined to our homes in April of 2020, I floated an idea to our friends who also like to cook:

To my surprise, four couples took us up on it. I suppose in the early days of COVID, it was something to pass the time, seeing as we’d already perfected our banana bread technique and exhausted all seven episodes of Tiger King.

I have fond memories of that day and our deeply satisfying, somewhat novel meal. We spent a lazy Saturday cooking and eating on webcam together, switching over to a corporate Zoom account after we got booted from our first free hour of Google Meet.

Our crawfish e-boils carried on for a couple of years post-pandemic. Eventually, someone suggested a Beaver Creek ski weekend, and our hangouts evolved into going on IRL ski trips instead of trying to cook crawdaddies together on our work-issued MacBooks. So it had been a while since we’d thrown a seafood boil together.

While we were over at a friend’s for dinner a couple of weekends ago, the idea of a crawfish boil resurfaced. In the haze of end-of-the-night optimism, we declared it a BRILLIANT idea. We were DEFINITELY doing it. Freshly changed into my Eberjey pajamas that evening, I sent a Google calendar invite to hold the date from bed. Nothing like calendaring yourself into having to follow through on your buzzy commitments.

Every time I post about our crawfish boils on Instagram, a few people will DM me for details. It’s an easy gathering to host, especially for a group of all ages, and it’s always a good time, whether our first-time attempt on conference call back in 2020 to now, seeing our friends’ toddlers enthralled by mudbugs. Given our diminutive patio space, we keep it pretty small, but one of the best things about a seafood boil is it’s incredibly easy to scale up or down as you need. Sharing the details below…

The crawfish.

We’ve been ordering live crawfish from LA Crawfish for years now. They arrive packed into a white styrofoam cooler, a little frosty and slow-wiggling. We typically order for Saturday delivery and do our boil same-day. If you’re concerned about delivery timing, you can have them held at FedEx and grab them yourself that morning at your local pickup location.

We usually get the purged crawfish value pack, which comes with seafood boil and creole seasoning. I have found that standard crawfish quantity guidelines, which recommend 3 lbs per person, far exceed what people actually eat. Assuming you have plentiful sides, I think 1.5 lbs per person is plenty unless people are big seafood eaters.

Crawfish not your thing? You can easily sub in shrimp or other shellfish if you prefer a different kind of seafood.

The table.

Since it was early in the season, our beech tree and backyard vines were just beginning to fill in. An inexpensive red checked cotton tablecloth added festive color to our slightly barren yard and a layer of softness to the table.

We rolled out a couple of sheets of butcher paper on top of the tablecloth and arranged a handful of sunflowers in a small mason jar. I try not to fight the unfussy nature of a seafood boil: We love pouring the contents of the stockpot right out onto the table and having everyone eat with their hands. A metal bowl for discarded shells and a canister of wet wipes for grubby hands are helpful, too.

Apps and sides.

This year, we snacked on a decadent crab dip with toasted baguette before the main event was ready. Zero percent healthy, one hundred percent tasty.

For the table, we set out French bread and butter. Shrimp, whole white mushrooms, Andouille sausage, yellow onions, corn, baby red potatoes, lemon, and garlic went into the stockpot with the crawfish. In past years, we’ve subbed Italian sausage in place of Andouille, and I honestly think it turns out better that way. Though a true Cajun boil calls for Andouille, in my experience, Italian sausage is more of a crowd-pleaser, and the spice of the Andouille cranks the heat up a bit too much.

Drink pairings.

We started with a few glasses of Txakolína, a fizzy white wine often drank with seafood in the Basque region of Spain — this is an inexpensive one that’s easy to find — and moved into briny seafood white pairings like Sancerre, Chablis, and Albariño. I also grabbed a quart of lemonade and 12-pack of Coors. (Likely knowing I would attempt to buy some Southern-made craft beer at the liquor store, my husband specifically instructed me not to “church it up”, haha.)

Dessert.

Leaning into the Southern theme, I whipped up a big Pyrex bowl of banana pudding — if you’ve never tried it, this five-ingredient recipe for Magnolia’s banana pudding is sinfully delish and spot-on. It transports me instantaneously to summer of 2009, when I’d reward myself with *a little treat* from the Bleecker Street bakery on the way home from my magazine internship. The pudding is better the next day when the Nilla wafers take on a moist, cakey texture, so prep the day before. In past years, I’ve also made Alison Roman’s key lime pie.

What’s better than a spring day on the patio when the sun’s finally peeking out, Olivia Dean is piping out of the Sonos, and the vibes are high? Let me know if you’ve hosted a seafood boil before — and what else you add to your spread.