Live or boiled crawfish — which should you order?

The gap is the cooking, not a sale

Live crawfish leave the kitchen at $35 a pound because nothing has been done to them — no stock, no seasoning, no garlic butter, no pot. Boiled crawfish cost $40 because all of that happened after your order landed. Nobody is being discounted and nobody is paying a premium; you are choosing which half of the work you want to do.

Order live if your household already boils

A lot of Armenian and Russian households in Glendale, Burbank and North Hollywood have a pot, a recipe and an opinion about it. If that is your kitchen, live is the obvious order — you get the animal and you get to argue about the dill yourself. Minimum three pounds, which is roughly the smallest quantity worth anyone driving.

Order boiled if the point is dinner in an hour

Boiled means the pot goes on when the order is confirmed, not before, so what arrives has not been sitting in a warmer. You pick the salt level and the heat level; everything else is finished in the garlic butter the business is built on. The trade you are making is control for time, and for most tables that is the right trade.

What live actually means when it arrives

Live means live: they come out of the tank and into your kitchen, and they need to be cooked the same day. If nobody at your address wants to deal with a bag of moving crawfish an hour after a delivery driver leaves, order them boiled. That is not a small consideration and it is worth saying out loud before you save five dollars a pound.