America the Bountiful

-All right, we're ready.

-Here we go.

We're ready.

[Capri] The good stuff.

Oh, yeah.

This is beyond unbelievable.

I don't think we have enough.

I think we're going to be all right.

[Capri] In south Louisiana, there lives a freshwater crustacean that holds a special place in the hearts of Cajuns.

It's like a celebration of who we are and what we're about.

[Capri] And Creoles alike.

It's very special to me.

Very special to my family.

[Capri] They'll venture deep into the bayou...

So this is where the crawfish come from?

This is the place right here, Capri.

[Capri] ...or even flood their rice fields... Rice is aquatic plant, and it's just a natural match for crawfish.

[Capri] ...to share a meal that connects them Mmm.

to all those who came before.

I'm Capri Cafaro and I'm on a mission to uncover the incredible stories of the foods we grow... ...harvest, create... ...and celebrate.

Beautiful, amazing meal.

So, I'm traveling America's backroads to learn our cherished food traditions from those who make them possible... Look at that.

...and are helping keep them alive.

There is so much more to learn.

Whoa!

[Capri] On "America the Bountiful."

[announcer] America's farmers have nourished us for generations, but today they face unprecedented challenges.

American Farmland Trust works with farmers to help save the land that sustains us.

Together we can work to keep America bountiful.

[Capri] Crawfish have been a celebrated food and cultural icon of Louisiana for centuries, beginning with the indigenous Houma tribe, who used the crawfish as their war emblem.

They weren't eaten by European settlers, however, until they were popularized by the Acadians who were exiled from French Canada and settled in the Atchafalaya River Basin of South Louisiana in the 18th century.

The Acadians became known as Cajuns and survived deep in the bayou by boiling crawfish just as they did larger lobsters back home.

By the mid 1960s, crawfish boils became so popular that farmers began raising them on rice fields to meet the growing demand.

Today, Louisiana leads the nation in yield, producing more than 90% of the domestic crop.

[man] Three, two, one, go!

[Capri] While Louisiana leads in crawfish production, visiting an event like the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival suggests the state may also lead in consuming them, too.

Local chef Johnny Gale is a festival regular and loves to celebrate the Cajun way of life through zydeco music and the iconic foodways of the region on display here at the festival.

A prime example?

The crawfish touffe.

[woman] What do you think?

[Capri] I think it's absolutely fantastic, and has a Breaux Bridge connection, right?

touffe has a specific Breaux Bridge connection.

Yes.

Actually, culinary historians have traced it back to Breaux Bridge in 1920.

Hmm.

There was a lady, Ms. Amere, that her daughters had invented it, and she called it crawfish touffe because, you know, the French word is smothered crawfish.

Right.

Now, crawfish is synonymous with Louisiana, but it has some specific cultural significance for Acadians.

Yes.

[Capri] The Cajuns.

But it wasn't always readily available to get crawfish.

It wasn't until like the 19... it was like 1920s where people started actually boiling crawfish in the backyard.

But then it was like a faux pas.

Like, you were looked at-- They kind of hid it.

Really?

Why?

Because it was kind of a poor man's food.

Interesting.

A lot of people thought they were bugs.

You know, a lot of people say mud bugs, and it wasn't a popular thing until the 50s, when two restaurants here, local restaurants, started putting them in the restaurant.

It was 1959 when the Louisiana State Legislature declared Breaux Bridge the Crawfish capital of the world.

[Capri] Well, that is definitely lucky because they are incredibly tasty.

[woman] Mhm hmm.

Mother nature feeds you well here in Louisiana.

We will never go hungry in this state because we can just go catch it.

[Capri] A fellow festival regular that has been going out and catching for decades is Cajun crawfisherman, Jody Meche.

He's been setting crawfish traps in the Atchafalaya River Basin, just northeast of Breaux Bridge since he purchased his first boat after learning the bayou waterways from his from his grandfather and father before him.

So this is where the crawfish come from?

This is the place right here, Capri.

This is the place.

Wow, that's a lot.

And I see that they took the bait.

And now you are refilling this.

[Jody] Yeah, right.

You see this?

This bait right here?

[Capri] Yep.

He looked like him.

Ah.

Okay, I put him in here.

This is like my sorter and my sacker.

And you see, I catch crawfish to make a living, but I'm a conservationist.

These bars allow these smaller, less desirable crawfish to go through.

[Capri] Got it.

If they're big enough, they're going in my sack and we'll have a crawfish boil later on.

They go in the sack.

What I do is I remove that door-- Easy enough.

--and I pull all the ones.

You make it look easy.

[Jody] Yeah.

[Capri] How did you learn how to do all this?

I learned with my dad.

[clears throat] It chokes me up.

I followed my dad all my life from the time when I was a 6 or 7 year old boy.

Followed him all over this Atchafalaya Basin, and I learned everything that I knew from him.

He'd be 100 years old today if he would be alive.

[Capri] God bless.

[Jody] He died at 84 years old.

But he left behind so much culture and heritage, and he instilled such an appreciation for my world that I live in.

My part of America, you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You think about him every time you're out here?

Yeah.

You know, he grew up-- He was born and raised on a houseboat in the Atchafalaya Basin, and they had to catch and hunt and kill everything that they ate.

You know what I mean?

It's my Cajun way that I've known all my life, you know?

It's my Cajun way of life that is unique to the whole world.

-You know what I'm saying?

-Yeah.

I mean, it's an unbelievable buffet of food to us, the Cajuns, in the Atchafalaya Basin.

So you really are just living off this bayou.

I love that you call it a buffet.

Yeah.

I mean, it's what I grew up eating.

It's a buffet of nature.

I mean, how do you navigate all of this?

I mean, there's not some sort of road atlas for the bayou, right?

You follow your dad and your brother and your uncle around, and it's instilled in you.

And you make up your decision whether you want to do it or not.

I went one year to college at Louisiana Tech University.

I started working in the oilfield, and I just had that call to come into the swamp, you know, to do what my dad did and my grandfather did.

And I bought my first boat, and I just started doing, you know, back then, 30 some odd years ago, what I'm doing today.

How important is it to keep that tradition alive for you, for your family, you know, for the the Cajun people that live in this region?

[Jody] Yeah.

It's really important to me to keep this alive because this is unique to the whole world.

I mean, where else can you go in the world and come out in almost a million acre wilderness like what we own on the water and catch something like this that is so delicious?

[Capri] You got a lot there, Jody.

Yeah.

You think we're getting enough to have our crawfish boil for us and some friends and family?

We're getting close.

I think we're going to run a few more traps, but we're going to catch what we need to have us a good crawfish boil.

All right, I'm getting hungry, man.

I'm getting hungry.

Me, too.

I'm a big boy.

A big boy gotta eat.

That's right.

You're a growing boy.

So all that crawfish that we caught today in this wheelbarrow ready to be cooked up.

Traditional Cajun crawfish boil.

I could not be more excited.

I know you got a little bit of a head start with the potatoes.

but we got a whole lot of other stuff we got to add now, right?

Right.

And what I do, like my crawfish, I put them in the wheelbarrow soaking in water, salty water.

And when the potatoes are going to be about seven minutes in, we'll add the crawfish and the other the ingredients.

And then we'll do another six minutes and they'll be ready to come out and we'll able to eat.

All right.

Jodi adds a Cajun seasoning that includes cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, mustard powder, and paprika, along with smoked sausage and mushrooms.

After six minutes of boiling, he kills the flame and adds one last unexpected ingredient.

Now this is your secret weapon.

Yeah, my ice.

I'll dump a good bit of ice, and then we really want to get in there with that paddle.

You know what I'm saying?

-All right.

-I'm going to try to-- So what does this ice do?

What it does-- The secret Jody ice.

It's going to stop the cooking process.

It cools the crawfish down.

What it does is going to make the crawfish, like, kind of suck up the seasoning better.

And then what we'll do, the corn is boiled.

We'll add the corn into the seasoning with the crawfish.

Kind of stir them up in there, and then we'll be ready to dump them on our table and be able to dig in, you know.

[Capri] All right, we're ready.

[Jody] We're ready.

[Capri] Good stuff.

Oh, yeah.

This is beyond unbelievable.

I don't think we have enough.

[Jody] I think we're going to be all right.

[Capri] So, you're the pro.

You're the expert.

You're going to have to show me how this is done because I'm just messing around over here.

We tested them out.

But like I told you earlier, when we dump them crawfish on the table, I was going to get serious.

And when I get serious, I got to turn my hat around backwards like this.

Got to get that out of my way.

You mean business.

I got to get that hat out of my way, and now I can get into some crawfish.

But I grabbed that booger like that kind of twisting that tail and separate him, and that fat is in that head.

I like to give it a little suck to get the juice and the seasoning out of that head.

I'm not that much of a pro at this point.

That's next level.

You see that real good fat that I talk about?

Mmm hmm.

I get that out with my pinky finger.

Give one twist-- [Capri] See, you make it look so easy.

--of the shell and the tail and then I grab the meat with my thumb and this finger.

And I pinch with my thumb and this finger.

[Capri] There you go.

[Jody] And I just pull the meat, separate it from the shell.

I check for that vein.

It's pretty clean.

I don't worry about it.

All right.

See?

Okay.

See, look.

I'm not doing too bad.

I'm not doing too bad.

It came out pretty good.

Mhm.

It's got a nice kick.

They came out really good.

It's got a nice kick.

Mhm.

Now I can tell that this is a family affair.

Obviously everybody's coming together today.

You guys get to do this all the time.

But it seems really important to be able to preserve this tradition within the Cajun community.

Like I said Capri, it's like when we get together and we ball up something that we went out in the basin and caught or something we went and hunted or fished for, it's like a celebration.

We get together and it's like a celebration of who we are and what we're about.

You know what I mean?

And we just enjoy looking at each other, and we're proud to be who we are and where we're from.

You know what I'm saying?

And we think about our old daddies and mamas and grandfathers and grandmothers, how they used to do the same thing, you know?

So it's really just a festive celebration of who we are and what we are about.

And a good family backyard friend get together, you know what I'm saying?

Doing a lot of talking, but I'm ready to eat some crawfish, I tell you that.

Well, you do have the hat on backwards.

You mean business.

I'm ready to get serious now.

Louisiana, Cajuns, we're serious about our crawfish, girl.

[Capri] The tradition of the Cajun crawfish boil became increasingly popular in the 1950s, to the point where the ritual is credited with helping turn the reputation of the poor man's food into something that was sought out by country and city dwellers alike.

This newfound popularity, combined with low rice prices, led the LSU AgCenter to work with rice farmers to develop an entirely new industry of crawfish farming.

Fruge Aquafarms, just outside of Branch, is situated on a fourth generation family rice farm that found a second source of revenue when they began raising crawfish on their flooded rice fields.

Brothers Mike and Mark Fruge oversaw that evolution of the now 3,500 acre operation.

The farm was founded in 1896 by their great, great uncle, J.T.

Milik, who recently became the namesake of their latest value added rice product, the first commercially available American whiskey made from 100% rice.

It's pretty wet out here.

[man] It's wet.

It is wet.

It's for real.

And this isn't a flood because of the of the rain.

It's a flood on purpose out here, right?

[man] That's right.

We're in the middle of a crawfish pond.

So it's a crawfish pond, but it also grows rice?

This last year he grew it.

That is an interesting cycle that, you know, people think about rice and crawfish on a plate, but not necessarily grown in the same place.

That's correct.

The rice-- Rice is an aquatic plant and it's flooded, it's irrigated, and it's just a natural match for crawfish that normally see that cycle in the wild.

We just kind of duplicated it in the rice fields.

Well, Mother Nature is helping that today.

She's helping to keep it flooded, yes.

And I see some pots hanging around.

I'm assuming crawfish are in there, right?

[man] Yes.

Our normal process.

We've come up down the line with an empty trap and we set it down.

It's baited with fish and a corn based dry bait.

We set the empty one down, and we pick up the one that's been sitting overnight.

Yep.

This is a 24-hour set.

[Capri] I was just going to ask that.

We dump them out.

[Capri] Well, I want to give this a try myself.

These are big, big boys.

All right, come on, crawfish, get out!

Give it a good shake.

Now, what is the deal with this shopping cart boat that we're pushing?

It's the only way I can describe it.

We built this.

Oh, well, good.

It helps me to navigate the mud.

So we used to use mechanical boats, and they would tear up the land, and we had to do a lot of work to repair it for the next rice crop.

And we came to the conclusion that these small boats that a man could actually walk would not damage the field surface, and we could harvest the product that way and do less work in the fall to try to repair everything.

Sure.

Well, cost effective, innovative, sustainable.

You guys got it all going on?

Pretty much.

You know, and not only do you have the crawfish and the rice growing out here, but you're innovating with rice in different ways, right?

Yes, we are.

[chuckles] Well, tell me about that.

Well, about seven years ago, we started on a new adventure trying to see if we could make a rice whiskey.

Aha!

And it turns out it's an extremely good whiskey.

It's something.

Well, I think we all deserve a drink after being out here in this rain.

[Capri] Mike and Mark began experimenting with distillation when rice prices were down as a way to add value to their crop.

Much drier in here.

Much, much drier.

Much nicer.

[Capri] Much nicer.

Much drier.

Better smell.

Absolutely.

But, you know, the hard work goes on outside, but it goes on in here as well.

Absolutely.

You have a very large operation that does a number of things.

How did this organization come to be?

One day at a time.

I bet.

It started a long time ago.

My great, great uncles came here from Germany.

J.T.

Miller, John Miller, was my great, great uncle.

He founded the farm.

My brother and I grew up here and during college, we were working for minimum wage.

Crawfish farming was brand new pioneer type.

Nobody took it seriously.

My brother and I did.

Built a business from that.

We've been raising crawfish farming for 30 something years.

So I'm always thinking about what's new and started looking for some way to add value to our farm.

And it might have been me or somebody else that said, "I wonder if you could make vodka out of this stuff."

And I was just in the right mood, and I said, "I'm going to find out."

And so during that adventure, I learned that there was really no such thing as an American rice whiskey.

Hmm.

It didn't exist, you know, not on a commercial scale.

Yeah.

The first thing we'll do, we'll pour some out and smell it.

The great thing about our whiskey is the nose.

It's one of my favorite things.

Ooh, this smells like it means business.

If you're a whiskey fan, this is quite unique.

You know, it's caramel, butterscotch, dark chocolate.

I like all those things.

[man] You know, all these things.

This is our small batch version, by the way.

It's at 96 proof.

This is my favorite.

I love to sip this.

Well, I've got to try this if it's your favorite.

[man] Yeah.

I taste the caramel.

Yeah.

And a little bit of the butterscotch.

Yeah.

And the dark chocolate is a bit of the finish.

We're really just coming to market with the whiskey.

So you're just right at the start of this.

Yeah, just at the beginning.

I would say the world is your oyster, but maybe it's, the world is your crawfish pond.

I don't know.

Does that work?

It's definitely a glass of whiskey.

Cheers to that.

Cheers.

[Capri] While Mike and Mark's whiskey is currently distributed only in Louisiana and Texas, the roughly 9 million pounds of crawfish raised at Fruge are distributed nationwide.

There is a significant portion of the catch, however, that stays here in south Louisiana, where it finds its way into the kitchens of New Orleans.

Crawfish became a staple with the Creole people here in the mid 20th century, and is used during lent to make a legendary crawfish bisque.

Accountant turned chef, Bonnie Young, learned how to prepare it from her grandmother as part of their Easter Sunday celebration.

The bisque is served with stuffed crawfish heads.

To prepare the stuffing, Bonnie sauts green bell peppers, yellow onions and celery, to which she adds crumbled bread and a seasoning mix of garlic, parsley, onion powder and crab boil liquid.

Now, you know, outside of Louisiana, folks oftentimes, and I know wrongly, just, you know, think that Creole and Cajun is interchangeable, but they're not.

They're not.

So explain the difference between Creole and Cajun cuisine.

[Bonnie] Sure.

Creole cuisine is more of a French Caribbean Latin influence.

You have a lot of sauces, a lot of seafood dishes.

And for Cajun, you have more jambalaya, blackened, a lot of wild game like alligator, rabbit, deer, things like that that's indigenous to them that they usually incorporate into their menu.

So yeah, Cajuns typically live in outer Louisiana and Creoles typically in the city of New Orleans.

And I feel every culture has that kind of family food tradition.

I'm so excited to be experiencing a bit of yours.

These are now ready to go.

We're one step closer, and... We're just going to dust them with a little flour.

This will bind them together because keep in mind they're going to go into the sauce, so we don't want the filling to fall out.

All right, all right.

[Capri] In they go.

[Bonnie] All right.

So the next step would be making our gravy.

You want to go ahead and cover the bottom of the pan with the oil because we're going to do the same process we did earlier by softening our vegetables in the oil.

Right.

So that's why we held on to these then.

Yeah.

Let's go ahead and add a little flour and make our roux.

Now is the roux what makes this a heartier dish.

Yes.

It will thicken the sauce.

Absolutely.

It's how we make our gravies, our gumbos, all of our sauces.

It's usually, like I said, a roux base.

So you go ahead and put in your flower, about a cup and a half.

It's more of a French European tradition then.

Yes.

Yeah.

Directly from France.

R-O-U-X roux.

All right.

Next we'll go ahead and put a little tomato paste in.

All right.

Here you go.

Thank you.

Just a little.

And now we're going to go ahead and add a little water so we can get that sauce really going.

And get a whisk and whisk it in.

[Capri] Oh look at that.

[Bonnie] Yeah.

That's the consistency that we want.

[Capri] It's nice and thick but it's not too thick.

It's definitely not a soup.

[Bonnie] No, no, no, no.

I mean, this is why it's a bisque.

[Bonnie] Yes.

Your flour would be your thickener, and also the tomato gives it the paste.

Right.

[Bonnie] Gives it that nice texture.

That rich texture.

So from here next we will go ahead and add our seasonings.

Like that.

Just a little.

That's the garlic salt.

Garlic parsley salt.

That's amazing.

My favorite.

Cayenne blend.

[Bonnie] Yes.

Seasoning salt.

Creole seasoning.

That's what it's called, Creole seasoning.

Everyone uses it in New Orleans.

Garlic powder.

Onion powder.

Garlic powder.

Onion powder.

[Bonnie] All right.

[Capri] Time for the bay leaves.

Our bay leaf.

Go ahead and drop those in.

And now the liquid crab oil.

I know it intrigued you.

You want to get into the smell?

I do.

It's like I don't even know how to describe it.

It's...

It's just, it's strong.

Yes, it's very, very strong.

It's strong.

So we're only going to use a smidgen.

[Capri] Because it's got personality.

[Bonnie] Yeah.

Not too much.

All right.

And also here I have fresh thyme.

And then we'll just go ahead and give that a little stir.

And you can't have your gravy without crawfish.

So we have some extra crawfish tails.

We've got some extra crawfish tails.

Yeah.

And we're going to just kind of throw those right into the gravy just like this.

And then we just go ahead and stir that in.

And then we'll be ready for our crawfish heads.

They're nice and golden brown in the oven.

And they go right into the gravy with everything else.

Can you smell it?

You smell the stuffing that we made?

It smells so good.

[Bonnie] All right, we're almost there.

From here, we will let it simmer for another 15 minutes and then serve over steamed rice.

[Capri] All right.

I'm going to get this crawfish head now.

Is there a special way to eat this?

Like to just get in there?

Because I want... You dig in.

You dig in.

It's just like it's a saying, when you eat boiled crawfish, you're going to have to suck the heads, pinch the tails.

So that's what you've got to do with this.

This is so good.

[Bonnie] Yeah.

[Capri] This is so, so good.

It's got a little bit of a kick.

You can taste the dimension of the crawfish.

Here you go.

Mhm.

It reminds me of my grandmother's.

Oh it's wonderful.

[Bonnie] You can take credit too, you helped out.

I think this is all you.

And my grandmother.

That's right.

And your aunts.

And my aunts.

Yeah.

You can taste the tradition in all of this, and the time and care that it that it takes.

It really is a celebration dish.

Yes, absolutely.

And let's celebrate new friends.

Yes.

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

Salud.

[Capri] Here in south Louisiana, it doesn't matter if you're a Creole, a Cajun, or merely a crustacean connoisseur.

The rituals surrounding crawfish have created cherished food traditions that have endured for generations.

Whether they're wild or farmed, this tiny red shellfish has become a symbol of the bounty of a place unlike any other, and remains a delicious tie that binds the people of this region to their ancestors.

But why take my word for it, when you can come experience it for yourself.

America The Bountiful... ...is waiting for you and me.

For more information visit Americathebountifulshow.com.

[announcer] America's farmers have nourished us for generations, but today they face unprecedented challenges.

American Farmland Trust works with farmers to help save the land that sustains us.

Together we can work to keep America bountiful.