If you are the sole human not within reach of a Wal-Mart, you're on your own locating crawdad meat. Otherwise, you're in luck. Two of the three Walmarts near us sells an 11-oz pack of frozen crawdad tail meat, ready to thaw & use. Should your own store not carry it, the seafood manager in that store can order it in for you. Meijer stores sometimes have whole crawdads on ice in their seafood case, which is great if you're having a boil, but I am too lazy to cook and peel 7 lbs, which is what you'd need for one batch of spread. Meijer is great about sourcing items for customers, so it's worth asking them to special order the meat too. To avoid a runny spread, drain the 'dads well in a sieve and/or on paper towels. I dry them off with a paper towel.
In a large saucepan with 1/2 c. butter, saute 1 diced green pepper and 1 c. chopped green onion (most of the green included), til the pepper is soft, about 8 minutes. Then add 3 tsp. Creole seasoning, 3 cloves minced garlic, a 4 oz jar of drained pimientos , and a few shakes of hot sauce or sriracha --- but just for flavor, not for heat. Stir it well, then add 16-24 oz. crawdad meat. When I double the batch I use 33 oz. of meat, ( three packages of the size I buy) and it's not too much. The tails will be the size of tiny shrimp. Don't chop them.
Heat gently for about 15 minutes, then stir in 16 oz. cubed cream cheese. Continue cooking a few minutes until it's all melted , stir now and then. Curiously, quite a bit of liquid is generated....the crawdads must be very juicy -- but there's more juice than I want to deal with when spooning or spreading this dip onto toasts, so on those occasions I drain much of it off before adding the cream cheese. ( of course some of the flavor departs too...) Keep the heat low, and as the spread cools off a bit, it may thicken slightly. I do like a little juice to soften the toasts if crisp, but more than that gets very messy. Offer forks to help capture all the goodies that fall off the toasts.
One batch should serve about 8 people. I wouldn't make it in a crockpot.....if you want to keep it warm, make it on the stove, pre-warm your crockpot, transfer the hot spread & keep it in there on warm or low...but keep the lid off or cracked a lot. Otherwise you will be serving a quite delicious crawdad soup. A little garnish of of green onion or parsley gives the finished dish some pretty color. .
