With all due respect, we don’t really care what you call them back home. Crayfish, crawdads, mud bugs, yabbie. whatever. We also know that you probably use them for various non-edible purposes — fish bait, aquarium stock, dissection in Zoology 1. In Louisiana, they’re called crawfish (or ecrevisses to French speakers) and they occupy an [...]

The soft shelled crab is a regular blue crab caught in an embarrassing state of exoskeletal undress.

Like a school kid in mid-puberty, the crab routinely outgrows its shell and needs to get rid of its confining duds. The biological routine is to binge eat like a monster, absorb as much water as possible, and shred [...]

Whether they’re packed into an overstuffed poboy  sautéed to buttery perfection or butterflied and lovingly stuffed with lump crabmeat dressing, these tasty and familiar crustaceans find its way onto just about every menu in Louisiana. To the uninitiated, they’re not much to look at — beady eyes, long whipping whiskers, and a thin, translucent shell [...]

uge claws, menacing spikes, six pointy legs — the blue crab needs all the protection it can get. That’s because inside its hard protective shell, this bulletproof crustacean stashes away some of the most sought-after meat in the sea.

The crab know as  callinectes sapidus (Latin for “savory beautiful swimmer”) plays a special part in seafood-centric [...]

The noble whiskered wonder doesn’t get the same kind of play in New Orleans that it does in drier areas of the Deep South — but then,  there’s tough competition for “marquee fish” status this close to the Gulf.

In nearby Mississippi, aquaculture turned the Delta into a veritable fish factory, churning out tons of grain-fed [...]

Like blue crabs and various shrimp species, the American oyster (crassostrea virginica) thrives in the mixed-water environment of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands. Raised in reefs where salty ocean water and sweet river waters mingle, these tasty mollusks are a valuable part of the state’s food culture and modern-day economic base.

Among shellfish, oysters are most similar to [...]

Many of the traditional Creole seafood dishes in the old line repertoire require fish that fits a certain flavor profile — usually “delicate, mildly flavored white fish.”

Luckily, there are plenty of species in the Gulf that fit that description. Here are a few of the more common varieties likely to show up on menus and [...]