How to Throw a Lowcountry Seafood Boil - Page 178

Now this was ambitious!  We invited Ox's entire Navy crew and all his neighbors to his house for a seafood boil/pig roaster build.  Everyone brought either ingredients for the boil, or cinder blocks for the roaster.  It was nerve wracking waiting to see if we would get all the ingredients, but his crew came through.  We had over 75 people, and enough ingredients for FOUR 8 gallon boils.  Everyone had a great time, and we got the pig roaster 80% done (this was our goal).

The last person to show up arrived just as we dumped the first load of food.  Good thing he did, since he was the ONLY guy bringing cocktail sauce.  We had two turkey fryers, and started them 15 minutes apart, so we were dumping food on the table every 15 minutes.  One of our fryers didn't have a basket, but we had a spider strainer and it worked out just fine.

Now Sean Brock says this is a hands only meal, but we had a tough time convincing everyone.  People came around though, and had a great time.  The first two batches went in 10 minutes or less, with the sausage going first.  The shrimp was a close second, probably because most of it was hand caught by a couple of the sailors on Ox's crew.

We used Charleston Spice Company seafood boil spice mix, and this had great flavor.  You can find them at the Summerville Farmers Market on Saturdays all year except the winter.

We missed one item on the equipment list...the trash can.  We had quite a mess to clean up, and very few places to put it.

I would HIGHLY recommend doing this for a party.  People will have a blast!

Advice: Have a lot of sausage - it seems to be the most popular part.  Don't forget the trash can.  Make sure at least two people are assigned to bring each item, so you don't risk a single point failure messing things up.